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CHAPTER 1
Goals and Methods
What Do We Study? An Ambiguous and Probably Heterogeneous Set of Artifacts
The title of this volume includes the term 'ornament', and I have already used it without restriction, as though it posed no problem and as though ornaments, as we commonly understand them, could easily be defined in an archaeological context. However, when applied to prehistoric artifacts, the term is laden with ambiguity. As a consequence, what we should include in our study and how we ought to call the material we were studying has been much debated among our team. The term 'ornament' (in French 'ornement' or 'parure') presents the disadvantage of being already interpretative. It presupposes a function — to adorn — while the category of artifacts that archaeologists usually group under this generic term is notoriously polysemic. It potentially includes not only ornaments sensu stricto, but also talismans, amulets, prophylactic and ritual objects, valuables to be exchanged, etc. (Vanhaeren 2010: 7-17; Vanhaeren & d'Errico 2011). In addition, beyond their aesthetic role, ornaments are also, or perhaps primarily, means of conveying information on gender, social status, age-sets and life cycles (Sciama & Eicher 1998). To add to the difficulty, ornaments are not restricted to the human body or human garments, but are often displayed on valuable — and sometimes not so valuable — objects. As stated by Vialou (1981: 393) when discussing the 'ornaments' from Kitsos Cave (Attica), "le matériel de parure de la grotte de Kitsos n'échappe pas à l'indétermination de la notion de parure. (...) Le matériel archéologique accumulé au cours des fouilles et décrit comme éléments de parure est hétérogène: les objets de parure ne ressortissant pas d'une preoccupation unique comme la fabrication d'outils, se réfèrent à des idées, à des pulsions, à des sentiments difficilement classifiables et souvent même indécelables".
To avoid implicit preconceived interpretations, an alternative to the use of the term 'ornaments' is the use of more descriptive terms, such as 'beads' or 'pendants'. These terms are relatively well defined, and they apply easily to entirely manufactured artifacts. They do not, per se, presuppose a specific function or meaning. Even then, however, some ambiguity remains. 'Shell beads' or 'shell pendants' are often used indiscriminately for beads and pendants manufactured from shell, and for entire shells only modified by perforation (e.g. Bar-Yosef Mayer 2013). In addition, these terms specifically refer to finished artifacts, while our study encompasses the whole production and use chaîne opératoire, and includes raw materials, unperforated shells, unfinished artifacts and finished artifacts that do not answer the definition of beads and pendants. In order to designate the whole assemblage under study, a more inclusive term is therefore required.
In the end, I retained the term 'ornament' for lack of a better option. It is not used in the interpretative sense, referring to artifacts that were necessarily 'ornamental', but as an archaeological category that encompasses many small, often perforated objects not known to have any other utilitarian function (Laporte 2009: 450). The term ornament allows us to take into consideration 'ornamental shell species' as a whole, and not just perforated specimens. Contrary to the French 'parure', it presents the additional advantage of not being restricted to (human) personal ornaments, but can also refer to the ornamentation of garments and objects.
However, neither this large and rather vague definition of 'ornaments' as a whole, nor the more specific definition of 'ornamental shells species', eliminate all problems. There remains a number of pieces or groups of pieces whose status — ornament, tool, container, ritual object, aesthetic item, etc., is uncertain. The problem is especially acute for the Neolithic assemblages, but we shall meet it also for some Palaeolithic and Mesolithic artifacts, despite the presence of a perforation. Symmetrically, ornaments are not always perforated: the Mesolithic carp teeth attached to garments with glue and tendons from Vlasac in Serbia (Cristiani & Boric 2012; Cristiani et al. 2014a) and Hohlenstein-Stadel in Germany (Rigaud et al. 2014a) were neither perforated nor grooved. Not all ornaments are recognisable as such in a prehistoric context. For instance, the Neolithic assemblages from Franchthi contain a number of unperforated, finely crafted artifacts, not known to have any utilitarian function, such as Spondylus discs or rods. Should these be considered as 'ornaments', even within a broad and generous definition? The absence of documented adorned Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic burials in Greece adds to the difficulty: unlike what can be done in other regions with richly adorned burials, we cannot refer to burials from the same cultural contexts to ascertain the use of what we tend or wish to consider as ornaments.
I thus chose to include in our study not only the small perforated beads and pendants that fit the archaeological definition of 'ornaments', but also a number of artifacts that may or may not fit this definition, but deserve to be discussed. All together, they represent an exceptionally rich collection of more than 12,000 specimens, which, even if their emic meaning remains uncertain, offers to the scientist extremely rich research perspectives.
A Resolutely Diachronic Perspective
When Marian Vanhaeren and I designed this project, we had only a very vague — and vastly underestimated — idea of the quantity and variety of ornaments that were awaiting us in the 'Leonardo's' storerooms of the Napfplion Archaeological Museum. On the other hand, we had a clear idea of the scientific issues we wanted to address, and how to address them.
Ornaments are well known as a hallmark of fully modern behaviour and as a non-verbal means of communication (Bar-Yosef Mayer et al. 2009; d'Errico & Vanhaeren 2009; d'Errico et al. 2005; Kuhn 2014; Kuhn et al. 2001; Kuhn & Stiner 2006, 2007; Stiner 2014; Vanhaeren 2005; Vanhaeren et al. 2013; Zilhão 2007). They are used simultaneously to indicate status differentiation within a group — in terms of age, gender, hierarchy, social role, power — and as symbols of the group's identity vis-à-vis neighbouring communities (e.g., Kuhn et al. 2001; Sciama & Eicher 1998; Vanhaeren 2010; Vanhaeren & d'Errico 2005; Wiessner 1982). Because of their social value, beads and pendants are also often exchanged over long distances (Godelier 1996; Marshall 1998; Taborin 1993, 2003), and the geographic distribution of exogenous ornaments is a good witness to social interaction networks.
Most previous studies relating to Palaeolithic and Mesolithic ornaments focussed on one or several of these aspects, and, logically, from mainly synchronic approaches: production of the ornaments (Cristiani & Boric 2012; Cristiani et al. 2014a, 2014b; Taborin 1993; White 1993, 2004, 2007), identification of interaction networks (Bar-Yosef Mayer 1997; Cristiani & Boric 2012; Komšo & Vukosavljevic 2011; Rähle 1978; Whallon 2006), identification of cultural or linguistic groups (Newell et al. 1990; Rigaud 2011; Rigaud et al. 2014a; Rigaud et al. 2015; Taborin 2003, 2004; Vanhaeren & d'Errico 2006), and investigation of social differentiation (O'Shea & Zvelebil 1984; Vanhaeren & d'Errico 2005; White 1999).
Less attention had been paid to the long-term transformations of ornament assemblages, either from a general perspective (Taborin 1993) or from specific contexts. When this project was initiated, the few publications concerning ornaments from long archaeological sequences were mostly descriptive. Problems such as the relationship between environmental transformations and the choice of ornaments, the relationship between the design, production and use of ornaments and changing socioeconomic systems, or the relationship between the composition of the human groups and the nature of the ornaments, largely remained to be investigated. More recent synthetic approaches have, since then, shed light on some of these questions (Bar-Yosef Mayer 2010, 2014; Colonese et al. 2010; Rigaud 2011; Stiner 2014). New and important diachronic sequences have also been published with more comprehensive perspectives: Üçagizli in Eastern Turkey (Stiner 2003; Stiner et al. 2013), Klissoura Cave 1 in Greece (Stiner 2010), Vela Spila in Croatia (Cristiani et al. 2014b).
None of these sites, however, provides a sequence spanning from the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic to the end of the Mesolithic, much less to the Neolithic. Franchthi thus offered a unique opportunity to study transformations in ornament assemblages over more than 30 millennia, in a well-documented context that witnessed important environmental and economic transformations. Indeed, behind the deceptive permanence of the cave, many changes took place in its status, in the composition of the groups visiting or inhabiting it, in how they exploited the immediate environment and how they produced their tools and hunting equipment (Perlès 2010, 2016a). It thus seemed logical to expect concomitant transformations in the ornaments, pertaining to the choice of types, the procurement strategies, the organization of production and the techniques utilised. How ornament assemblages were transformed through time and how these transformations related to environmental and socioeconomic changes was thus the initial focus of our research project.
The Multiple Facets of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Shells Ornaments
Preliminary investigation into Palaeolithic and Mesolithic ornament assemblages from Franchthi had shown that perforated shells were largely predominant. Franchthi being a coastal site where shellfish was exploited, a clear distinction had to be made between shellfish and ornamental shells. We shall follow here Stiner and colleagues' definition:
"The term 'ornamental shell' is used in this study to distinguish one broad category of mollusc shells from two others, namely the residues of edible shellfish consumed at the site and the remains of land snails that were native to the cave. Because ornaments are items of technology, their definition must be sufficiently inclusive to permit both the exploration of production stages and consideration of the raw materials transported to the site. Classifying a shell specimen as ornamental thus acknowledges the potential presence of un-worked material at the site, which may have been rejected, cached, or forgotten. We stipulate, however, that unaltered specimens may be considered 'ornamental' material only if they were collected and transported deliberately by humans and fall within a type that was used exclusively for ornament-making and never as food." (Stiner et al. 2013: 383).
Albeit less elaborate than geometric beads or pendants, perforated shells present the particular interest of being at the interface between several ontological spheres: biological and environmental, technical and symbolic. The biological and technical spheres in particular entail many potential factors of variability that must be taken into account before concluding in favour of 'cultural' or 'symbolic' changes in ornament assemblages. We thus considered it essential to approach these shells primarily as natural species on the one hand, and as artifacts on the other.
Ornamental Shells as Natural Species
Three aspects of shells as biological species may induce variations that are relevant from a diachronic perspective: the relative availability of different shell species should vary according to climatically-induced environmental transformations, the shells are expected to reflect the natural morphometric and colour variability of all living populations, and the conditions of collection — location, ease, techniques — vary according to the taxon.
Climatically induced transformations affect water temperatures and the conditions of growth of marine molluscs, while the correlated changes in sea level modify the morphology of the coast and the habitats of the molluscs. We shall only allude to the first aspect here since we lack data on temperature requirements of the different taxa represented at Franchthi. In contrast, we can rely on the pioneering investigations of the palaeomorphology of Koildaha bay to reconstruct coastal paleoenvironments at different periods of the past, to estimate the potential availability of various shell taxa and compare the potential to the actual spectrum represented in the archaeological assemblages (Chap. 2 and 9).
The two other aspects, morphometric variability and differences in the ease of collection, directly refer to the molluscs as living populations. This led us to build up large systematic reference collections from the Argolid. An anonymous reviewer of an article in which I mentioned the constitution of reference collections for Cyclope neritea/pellucida,Columbella rustica and Antalis sp. (Perlès 2016) caustically questioned what he called a 'fashion', since museum collections were readily available. Without even mentioning the fact that museum collections are not optimal for experimental reproduction of the ornaments, there are many questions that museum collections cannot answer. Because the conditions of collection are rarely specified, the internal variability in shape, dimensions and colours that can be expected in an homogenous population cannot be documented. Likewise, it is impossible to assess whether these parameters remain stable from year to year when the molluscs are collected live, or from beach to beach in the case of species collected dead in thanatocoenoses. These potential factors of variability had to be controlled to evaluate the significance of dimensional variations within archaeological assemblages, and the potential choice of specimens by the bead-manufacturers.
Similarly, depending on the natural habitat of the various shell species, their collection is bound to differ in terms of time, energy and technique: museum collections do not tell us how easy or difficult it is to collect a given species. Does it require special skill or equipment? What is the average hourly rate of collection? Does it vary among individual collectors? What is the proportion of naturally perforated specimens that can be directly used as ornaments? Are age classes stable from collection locus to collection locus, or do they vary? Answering these questions is indispensable in order to envision who could have collected the various ornamental species, how it could have been done, and how valuable the collected specimens could have been depending on the time and energy devoted to their collection.
Although contemporary environmental conditions are different from those of the prehistoric past, our reference collections, which are presented in detail in Appendix 3, have proved to be an invaluable source of insights, and will be exploited throughout the present work.
Ornaments as Artifacts
As a specialist in lithic technology, I could not and did not want to forget that ornaments are also artifacts, just as chipped stone tools or bone tools are. After all, their 'symbolic value' is only an inference, whereas their 'artifactuality' is an indisputable fact. This technological approach will again be developed here along three complementary lines of investigation: by considering the production of ornaments as, (a) the outcome of different technical manufacturing and use sequences, (b) as technical productions influenced by the composition of the producer/user group and, (c) as one among several technical and economic activities.
As with any other artifact, we thus had to reconstruct the entire chaîne opératoire for each category of ornament, from procurement to discard, and bring to light diachronic variation in the design, the selection of individual specimens, the techniques of perforation and, when possible, in the way ornaments were used and combined. Ultimately, this would allow us to define specific ornament traditions, defined by the transmission, from generation to generation, of particular conceptions of ornaments — in the choice and association of types — and particular ways of producing and using them (White 1993). How these traditions were locally expressed at any given time, however, may have been influenced by the organisation of production — individual, collective or specialised — and by the composition of the groups that visited or inhabited the cave. Differences in the composition of the human groups are strongly suspected, in particular between the early and late Upper Palaeolithic phases and we need to take them into account when interpreting variation in ornament assemblages.
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Excerpted from "Ornaments and Other Ambiguous Artifacts from Franchthi Volume I"
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Copyright © 2018 Catherine Perlès.
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