Analysis of Style in Artifacts
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 12: 125-142 (Volume publication date October 1983)
Stephen Plog
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)
Letters to My Tutor…
My dearest Simone,
I never got around to looking at the content of this review and the last side-by-side (making a note to go back and do that.) Still …
The question of what can be said about the depth and type of interaction between groups that share similar styles seemed to taunt the imagination. Plog and Hegmon mention studies involving analysis of how styles are produced and distributed in living cultures and what could be gleaned from those studies to help the understanding of style variation and distribution in prehistoric cultures. They both also discussed what could be said about the level of exchange between groups based on the level of style they shared, whether whole patterns or parts of patterns or similarities in the thickness of lines for example. I started to wonder whether analyses of the relationship between shared language traits and level of interaction between cultures might be instructive with respect to variation and exchange in artifacts. It’s one of those weeks where I haven’t poked around on the net as much. Next week will likely be the same.
In reading these reviews on style, I kept thinking about the styles of being human. What are my human styles? What style of human am I? Particularly I thought of one of the habits of my recently deceased friend. He was quite good about going toward people in distress. He didn’t avert his eyes or avoid contact. He offered to listen, to interact, to hug, to share information. He was so beautiful in this way.
Several times this week I saw this mother who appeared to be in general distress. I wanted to talk to her, but I was so worried about being a bother or having nothing useful to say or share that I felt paralyzed in her presence. (What a thing it is to feel at once disconnected from my own existence while being so obsessed with the particular and small details of it.) Her children were lovely and sweet to each other. Her daughter looked eight or nine, but being the oldest of four she was quite focused on being a big girl and a strong girl for her mother and her siblings. In the time it took me to set aside my own angst, they were gone.
Kind thoughts,
S.
