on form and pattern

ON FORM AND PATTERN Edited by: Catalin Vasilescu Maria-Luisa Flonta loana Craciun

Humboldt Symposium (Bucharest, 29-31 May 2014)

EDITURA ACADEMIEI ROMANE Bucuresti, 2015

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Peer-reviewers:

Acad. MARIUS ANDRUH Prof. MIRCEA FLONT A, corresponding member of the Romanian Academy

Descrierea CIP a Bibliotecii Nationale a Romaniei ON FORM AND PATTERN. Humboldt Symposium On form and pattern: Humboldt Symposium / edited by Catalin Vasilescu, Maria-Luisa Flonta, Ioana Craciun. - Bucuresti : Editura Academiei Romane, 2015 ISBN 978-973-27-2531-3 I. Vasilescu, Catalin (ed.) II. Flonta, Maria-Luisa (ed.) III. Craciun, Ioana (ed.) 5(063)

Editorial Assistants: Mihaela MARIAN Virginia PETRICA Monica STANCIU Computer Editing: Luiza DOBRIN, Magdalena JINDICEANU Cover: Mariana SERBANESCU Final proof: 3.07.2015; Format: 16/70x 100 Proof in sheets: 28.75 + 30 color plates D.L.e. for large libraries: 859-31 D.L.e. for small libraries: 859

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CONTENTS 1. A Plea for a Look in the Neighbour's

Backyard. Why Should We Organise a Symposium

On Form and Pattern? Catalin VASILESCU

7

FORM AND LOGIC 2. Logical Form, Mircea DUMITRU.......................................................................................... 3. Shapes and Syntactic Representations, Alexandra CORNILESCU......................................... 4. Fidelity Towards Forms: An Ontological Approach, Ana BAZAC

11

17 31

FORM AND NUMBERS 5. Numerical Taxonomy for Classification, Tiberiu POSTELNICU........................................... 6. New Developing Forms and Patterns for Ensuring the Sustainability of our Society, Ildiko

TULBURE....................................................................................................................... 7. The Associativity in Present Mathematics and Present Physics, Radu IORDANESCU.......... 8. Polynomial Equations and Vector Bundles, Marian APRODU.............................................. 9. Shape Optimization and the Implicit Parametrization Method. Applications, Mihaela

Roxana NICOLAI.

43 57

67 77 83

INANIMATE

FORM

10. Shapes and Patterns in Matter and Fields: Inter-related Microscopic and Macroscopic Physical Properties, Ioana PINTILIE, Petre BADICA, Mircea BULINSKl, Victor

KUNCSER....................................................................................................................... II. Reaction Pathways in the High Temperature Oxidation of Hydrocarbons, Domnina RAZU$ 12. Computing the Fractal Dimension at Molecular Scale, Gianina DOBRESCU, Florica

PAPA, loan BALINT, Valentina LAzARESCU................................................................ 13. Heterogeneous Catalytic Oscillatory Reactions, Niculae 1. IONESCU, Cristian HORNOIU 14. Air-Quality Analysis by Standard Methods versus Complementary Approach, Ion

VETRE$, Ioana IONEL Form

and Embodied

153

166 176

Nona PALINCA$.......................................................................................................................

15. Artefact

101 140

Knowledge.

An Archaeological

Perspective,

190

LIVING FORM 16. Computational Aspects of Biological Patterns Formation, Radu DOBRESCU 17. Reconstruction of DNA! ARN Strands From Fragments, Eleodor Gh. BISTRICEANU.. 18. Neurobiology of Form Perception. An Introductory Literature Review, Maria-Luisa FLONTA....... 19. Response Patterns to Stress in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders, Stefan POPA, Dan

L. DUMITRA$CU............................................................................................................ 20. Endoscopic Patterns in Gastric Cancer, Mircea MANUC, Maria ISPAS, Daniela MANUC

207 217

230 246 257

21. Patterns of Disease in Pancreatic Cancer: Is There Any Chance for Cure in these Patients? Traian DUMlTRA$CU 22. For MicroRNA Believers - The Decalog of Cancer Involvement, Dana A. George A. CALIN......................................................................................................................... 23. How to Understand Morphogenesis? Catalin VASILESCU..................................................

otzs,

272 280 291

GERMAN STUDIES 24. Form und Formbewusstsein in Heinrichs von Morungen Tageliedwechsel, Ioana CRACIUN..... 25. "Form ist Wollust" - Zur Ambiguitat des Formbegriffs im deutschen Expressionismus, Markus FISCHER............................................................................................................ 26. Rezeptionspattems des Celanschen Werkes im rumanischsprachigen Kulturfeld, Bianca BICAN............................................................................................................................. 27. Colonialist Ideology and Language Planning: The Case of Kolonial-Deutsch, Andrei A. AVRAM............................................................................................................................ 28. Form und Metamorphose in Goethes (naturwissenschaftlichen) Schriften, Mihaela ZAHARIA 29. Metamorphose zweier Stadte: was Wien und Bukarest bei Rezzori Eint, Ana-Maria PALlMARIU.................................................................................................................... 30. Stumpf- und Scharfsinn. Wem nutzt eine feindliche Gestaltung? Gabriel H. DECUBLE....

303 312 320 332 344 354 363

FORM AND VISUAL ARTS 31. Architectural Form Between Mimesis and Genesis, Mihaela CRITICOS 32. Discourse on the Mimetic Forms in Architecture: Appearance Determination by MorphoLogic, Ana Maria CRI$AN.............................................................................................. 33. Metaphorical Function of the Architectural Form, Kazmer 34. A Hermeneutic Approach to Brancusi's Kiss Motif, Matei STiRCEA-CRACIUN................ 35. Computational Design and the Generated Form, Dana TANASE, Ionut ANTON 36. Bio-Inspired Architecture as Performance Orientated System, Anca VITCU.......................

xorics

AUTHORS'

CONTACT DETAILS................................................................................

ANNEX...........................................................................................................................

6

373 394 404 423 435 449

459 461

15. ARTEFACT FORM AND EMBODIED KNOWLEDGE. AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE Nona PALlNCA$ Vasile Pdrvan Institute of Archaeology, Romanian Academy, Bucharest

15.1. INTRODUCTION

While artefact use is present in both human and non-human animals, only humans use artefacts in their social relations. This particular kind of artefact use, which began during anthropogenesis and became ever more complex, is considered to represent the key defining trait of humanity (Olsen, 2010: 9) to the point where it has been argued that unless we conceive of human society in terms of networks of humans and artefacts we cannot adequately understand human social life (primarily Latour (1993) and Latour (2005); recently in archaeology Olsen (2010). At the same time, it is generally agreed in the social sciences that we are still far from being able to understand the full complexity of human-artefact relations. With the ever-increasing complexity of artifact use there was increased artefact form variation too. This variation is considered in archaeology not to be chaotic in space and time: within variation artefacts yield patterns because their production is 'guided by a cultural system' (Read, 1982: 58; see also, among others, Lemonnier, 1989: 159-160; Sorensen, 1997: 182, 188). This means that artefact form variability is related to human interaction. Yet how exactly does this relation work - that is, which similarities and differences are relevant in what situation - is far from being known. This debate, which is as old as prehistoric archaeology (Adams, 1988: 41) and in the late 1960s reached a particular intensity (with over one thousand publications per year in computer-assisted classification alone: Cormack, 1971: 323), despite its paramount importance, was widely abandoned in the 19908 mainly because it failed to produce a comprehensive theory to account for artefact variability (unlike, e.g., biology which works with evolutionary theory: Voorrips, 1982: 109), and the range of possible aspects (technological, social, ideological) that could be linked to artefact shape variation was widely exhausted. This paper aims to show that to the many reasons for artefact form variation already considered by the 'typological debate' a new one can be added based on recent archaeological work on the embodiment of knowledge. 15.2. PREVIOUS WORK ON MORPHOLOGICAL AND THEIR INTERPRETATION

PATTERNS

The following short review of previous research is not meant to deliver a comprehensive summary (for a concise history of research see, e.g., Adams, 1988); 190

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for the basic literature see Palincas, 2005), but rather to convey an image of the main difficulties in identifying and explaining morphological patterns in the archaeological material in a way that will also allow situating embodied knowledge within the debate. Because archaeology does not have a theory to account for artefact variability (e.g., Voorrips, 1982: 94), only rarely is it possible to classify artefacts by deductive procedures - this is in fact done only for testing hypotheses (Voorrips, 1982: 104-107). In most cases archaeologists have to proceed inductively - i.e. to build typologies (Voorrips, 1982: 107-115), hence the name 'typological debate': they inspect the material and try to identify patterns, which they use to define types. The type is 'formed by the observer at a chosen level of abstraction' (Ford, 1954: 47), and it is defined by a 'unique association of attributes' (Voorrips, 1982: 100); corresponding to every type there is a group of artefacts from the 'real world' (Voorrips, 1982: 95, 107). Types are 'absolutely mutually exclusive' (Adams & Adams 1991: 214), and form a 'system of types' called typology (Adams & Adams 1991: 20). There are several major difficulties with building typologies, some of which will be discussed further. Firstly, from the infinite number of attributes each object possesses analysts can recognize only a few, meaning that relevant attributes might remain outside consideration. Secondly, the question 'Why do we think that two objects are similar?' is a serious philosophical problem, which we need to address (Voorrips, 1982: 95-96, 112). Thirdly, from the attributes alone we cannot infer what types mean - that is, in what kind of social interaction the objects assigned to those types participated, whether in one kind or in several, etc. The formation of types is on a safe ground as long as: • the aim is to obtain a description of a collection of archaeological materials, because this does not have to possess any explicative value (Voorrips, 1982: 108-109); • the aim is chronological order, because we can rely on external information in ordering the items: for example, settlement stratigraphy (i.e., the sequence of strata resulted from successive construction layers within the same settlement), and associations of objects- (as in buildings, hoards and treasures, indicating, albeit sometimes only partial, contemporaneity of objects) (O'Brien, Lee Lyman, 2002: 39-40; see also Fig. 15.1); • or to analyse technological evolution because we can follow aspects of interest (Voorrips, 1982: 109). Because in all other cases additional information is lacking, understanding the meaning of types - that is, linking artefact morphology to artefact-use - is dependent on a theory. Yet, whoever came up with such a theory was soon faced with counterexamples. For instance, the culture-historical archaeology argued that similar artefacts yield continuous distributions in space because they are produced by people interacting closely - i.e., learning from each other how to make and use those artefacts (e.g., Chi Ide, 1956: 33-34 and passim); some identified these groups 191

of people with ethnic units (see, in the first place, Kossina, 1920, and discussion in Bembeck, 1997: 26-31). This theory was successfully applied in some cases, such as that of the migration of the Bastamae (Babes, 1993), while it failed in most others - for example, there are no convincing archaeological traces of the posited Indo-European migration, believed to account for the distribution of Indo-European languages over most parts of Europe and large parts of Asia (Vulpe, 2010). Counterexamples are far more frequent than the examples supporting this theory because other social relations, which might account for artefact variation, are primordial in relation to ethnicity (Niculescu, 2011) and, as a principle, archaeological research is far from capable of establishing which artefacts and morphological types are relevant in ethnic terms (Barth, 1969; Niculescu, 2011). Typl

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Fig. 15.1. Ridge-butted axes from the Carpathian Basin grouped morphologically (within rows) and chronologically (the top row: c. 1700 BCE; the bottom row: c. 1500 BCE) (from David, 2013: Fig. 6, upper halt). The chronological order relies on the various associations (hoards and graves) in which these axes occur.

192

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Critics of the culture-historical approach argued that artefacts are adaptive in character, meaning that their variation is primarily determined by their efficiency in relation to their purpose (technological, social and ideological) (Binford, 1965). In this line, H. Martin Wobst showed that costumes in 1970s Yugoslavia were adapted to local social relations: costume elements signalling ethnicity were visible before entering into the gun range of one's enemy, an adaptation to a multi-ethnic environment; those signalling social position were visible only at short range (i.e. mainly in face-to-face interaction); while those invisible to people outside the household were produced with little cost, and showed little variation as no information on status was necessary to transmit to the household members (Wobst, 1977). Counter-examples are, again, more numerous. Daniel Miller, investigating pottery production and use in Dangwara village (Central India), argued that form, function and efficiency correlate only in part, in many cases function being established by convention rather than by efficiency (Miller, 1985: Chapter 4); also, there was 'massive redundancy [of shapes]: a single, narrow-mouthed pot in a range of sizes could replace virtually all the water pots' as well as many of the pots with other functions (Miller, 1985: 65). Pierre Lemonnier noticed that in Papua-New Guinea some Anga villages used a costume which did not protect the body against rain, and was not changed at the risk of getting pneumonia more often than the immediate neighbours; the companies Cessna, Mitsubishi and Concorde failed in introducing airplanes with clear technical merits among others because of their unusual design. Lemonnier then argued that once a certain form of an artefact becomes socially accepted, it can happen that its change is rejected in spite of all possible benefits (Lemonnier, 1989: 168-170). His examples with the airplanes also show the analysts that there are cases when morphological attributes relevant for social processes occur on only very few or even unique artefacts and do not constitutea type. Furthermore, since around 1940 some archaeologists argued that if instead of building etic classifications (i.e. classifications from the analysts' point of view) archaeologists would be able to reconstruct emic classifications (i.e., those of artefacts' producers and users), they could 'get inside the heads of artefacts' makers' and thus understand prehistoric societies (e.g., Adams, 1998: 41, with literature).Ethnoarchaeological work shattered this expectation mainly by showing that: some people are greatly interested in classification while other are not (e.g., the Navajo and the Malapantaram, respectively: Morris, 1979: 120 and note 8); evenat a local level the same set of objects is classified differently, for example, by menand women (Kempton, 1977 cited in Miller, 1982: 22), by people of different socialstatus (Miller, 1985: 176), etc.; unlike scientific classifications, which tend to constitute clear-cut categories, in everyday life people classify by using fuzzy sets:'a mug is a sort of cup' (Kempton, 1978). 193

These and other problems of how to define types and how to understand what they mean led to a complete deadlock of the typological debate in the later 1990s. Archaeology's recent interest in embodied knowledge, while not solving any of these basic problems, adds a new aspect to the possible interpretations of artefact form.

15.3. EMBODIED KNOWLEDGE

For a very long time, at least in the Western tradition, beginning with Plato, knowledge was understood only as that which could be expressed in words, mathematic or chemical symbols. Yet there existed always an awareness of the fact that this kind of knowledge cannot appropriately describe the knowing of how to ride a bicycle, play the piano, cut a log, etc. - that is, what was usually termed as skills. This distinct way of knowing was defined by the philosopher Gilbert Ryle as embodied knowledge or 'knowing how', while the theoretical, discursive knowledge was defined as 'knowing that' (Ryle, 2009 [1949]; Bender Jorgensen, 2013: 91). It was only from the mid_20th century on that Western philosophers concerned themselves with understanding how embodied knowledge works and how it relates to the theoretical knowledge. To cite a telling example for this relation, engineering students at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, got significantly better marks after an experiment in which they acted as parts of machines they were trying to construct (Bender Jergensen, 2013; see there also recent philosophical and psychological literature). This discussion within philosophy and psychology developed rather in parallel with archaeology and had until recently no impact on the latter (for one of the few exceptions see Serensen and Rebay-Salisbury, 2013). More influential in archaeology was the research carried out in anthropology and sociology. In fact, considered across all disciplines, the first to draw attention upon human bodies as learning and knowing to do things in specific ways which have autonomy in relation to theoretical knowledge as well as influence upon the latter was Marcel Mauss. In his ground-breaking paper from 1934 [1936] 'Les techniques du corps' he basically argued that: • even the most simple movements - walking, sitting, eating, defecating, making sex, swimming, cutting logs, etc. -, while having a physiological and psychological component, cannot be reduced to them because movements also have a strong social component which, in turn, has important physiological and psychological consequences (for example,

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unlike in most other places on earth, most European adults cannot squat, because the tradition of sitting on chairs modified the physiology of their bodies); • this social conditioning related primarily to the traditions of the wider group, then within this group to gender, age, class, etc. • body techniques determine specific ways of experiencing the world (for example, if European bodies cannot experience the divine it is because unlike the Oriental ones they were not taught to do this); • the first human implement in history was the human body itself. Mauss's ideas had impact on archaeology via the theory of practice as developed by Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu, 1972; Bourdieu, 1979; Bourdieu, 1980) and Anthony Giddens (1984). Nevertheless, the archaeology of the body focused mostly on other aspects (such as symbolism, the relation between body practices and social organisation, gender), while the preoccupation with the embodied knowledge remained intermittent (Wallaert-Petre, 2001; Hamilakis, 2002; Wendrich, 2012).

15.4. EMBODIED KNOWLEDGE

AND ARTEFACT

FORM

The number of case studies on embodied knowledge in archaeology is still limited. I will mention a few of the more recent examples bearing on the issue of artefact morphology and morphological types. The first example concerns changes spanning the Early and the Middle Bronze Age (from the Nagyrev to the Vatya and Vatya-Koszider phases) on the tell settlement at Szazhalombatta (30 km south of Budapest, on the right bank of the Danube) (Sofaer, 2011). A tell is a mound-like settlement resulted from the building of newer dwelling places on top of the debris of earlier ones. It was argued that living directly on top of the remains of earlier generations gave people a 'tangible relationship with their past' (Sofaer, 2011: 219) and thus impacted the creation of their identity (Chapman, 1991; Sofaer, 2011: 219). Joanna Sofaer was interested in following in Szazhalombatta the process of human ontogeny - that is, how people become part of social categories (Sofaer, 2011: 217), how they 'literally make themselves through learning in a social setting and the production and reproduction of social traditions. They literally embody their histories and the histories of their relations with others and the material world' (Sofaer, 2011: 218). From her discussion I will select here only the aspects that can be linked to embodied knowledge. In this tell changes in artefact form were interpreted as related - among others - to changes in body movements and etiquette (Fig. 15.2). 195

---------

p~ m

yi

t11

di b Fig. 15.2. a. Early Bronze Age (Nagyrev) suspended bowl; b. Middle Bronze Age (Koszider) wall-hung bowl (from Sofaer, 2011: fig 3; reproduced with permission from J. Sofaer and J. E. Robb).

Thus, in the Early Bronze Age (N agyrev phase) houses had their storage pit outside, while inside the house four-handled bowls were hung by threads from beams in the ceiling; this arrangement compelled people to move around dodging the vessels. In the Middle Bronze Age (Vatya and Vatya- Koszider phases) the storage pit was placed in the centre of the house, the bowls, now having only one handle, were hung on the walls, with other possessions placed along the walls; this arrangement created a free place around the central storage pit where a new set of body movements, part of a new etiquette, could be created, rehearsed and controlled: who sits where and in what position, according to status (age, gender, household member, visitor, etc.), how to move around appropriately, etc. The creation of new embodied attitudes was mediated, among others, by the changes in artefact form (Sofaer, 2011: 220-223). This process can be seen as tantamount to the creation of new bodily hexis (Bourdieu, 1979: 552-553 and passim), although J. Sofaer does not use this concept (as, moreover, she does not situate her concept of human ontogeny in relation to the concept of habitus, despite the latter also referring to the same process and having been very influential in the social sciences since the 1970s: Bourdieu, 1972; Bourdieu, 1980). The bodily hexis, 'une maniere de tenir son corps, de le presenter aux autres, de le mouvoir, de lui faire une place, qui donne au corps sa physionomie sociale' (Bourdieu, 1979: 552), and thus makes social order appear as natural, becomes easier to observe when the conditions of acquisition and the conditions in which it is performed differ significantly (as in cases of social ascent: the bodies act as they were previously taught, and adjustment to the new social conditions remains always partial) (Bourdieu, 1979: 122). 196

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iszider} aer

torage pit .ads from i dodging lases) the ~only one walls; this iew set of irsed and e, gender, etc. The .hanges in amount to , although er concept latter also 11 sciences ie maniere une place, hus makes aditions of ntly (as in justment to

A second example is from the Late Bronze Age settlement at Popesti (town Mihailesti, Giurgiu Co., some 25 km southwest of Bucharest), and concerns pottery which also exists in southern Romania and northern Bulgaria. Comparison of the pottery from the earlier part of the Late Bronze Age (i.e., dated to mid-Iri" mid-14th c. BCE) and its later part (i.e., dated to mid-14th - early 12th c. BCE) yields important changes (Palincas, 2004-2005). The earlier pottery (belonging to the so-called Fundeni-Govora style) is varied in terms of fabric and the fine ware is richly decorated (Fig. 15.3.1). The fabric of the later pottery (of the Radovanu style; Fig. 15.3.2-6) is less differentiated, and the large surface decoration disappeared. At first sight these changes can be interpreted as the result of levelling of social differences or as social differences not having been expressed in the pottery repertoire. Yet by considering the changes in vessel dimensions and shapes a different interpretation becomes more probable. The small vessels (mainly kantharoi and cups) have a narrow mouth with high rim-handles which makes touching with the lips difficult (Fig. 15.4.1) and rounded bottoms, which makes them unstable when filled (Figs. 15.3. 3-4 and 4). These new forms required new ways of handling the vessels, that is, new table manners: most probably the use of spoons or sticks for eating and of straws for dinking (Fig. 15.4. 2-3), and certainly new ways of handling the vessels when filled and when empty. The use of larger cooking and serving vessels (Fig. 15.3. 5-6) compared to the previous period suggests that the new table manners were elaborated and practised in larger groups that is, under social control- probably with some people being included, and others not.

I

Fig. 15.3. Popesti - Late Bronze Age pottery: 1. Fundeni-Govora style; 2-6. Radovanu style (nos. 2-4. small kantharoi with rounded bottom; 5-6. cooking and/or serving vessels) (I. from Vulpe, 1959, fig. 6.a, completed by the author; 2-6: my drawings; © the author).

197

Table manners not only qualify us socially (Bourdieu, 1979: 219-222, 444-447; Jameson, 1987), but they are also profoundly related to the way the body experiences the world. To go back to an example already cited by Mauss: when Napoleon III invited the Shah, who was eating with his fingers, to use a gold fork, the latter replied 'Vous ne savez pas de quel plaisir vous vous privez' (Mauss, 1934 [1936]: 19). Quite like table manners, a whole range of gestures and values become embodied, i.e. 'embedded in the primary dispositions of the body' (Dejarlais, 1992: 70), and so engage a 'sensory experience' (Dejarlais, 1992: 70), 'a visceral, emotional, and moral stance', a 'gut feeling' (Dejarlais, 1992: 71; for a theory of how this process takes place see Warnier 2001); social organisation is naturalized and thus stabilized, while the introduction of new attitudes have to overcome, among others, these deep bodily reactions.

Fi

Fig. 15.4. Possible ways of using the small kantharos of Radovanu type: 1-2. drinking; 3. eating (1. photo by Th. Isvoranu; 2-3. my photos; © the author). Fig

The third example concerns crafts and is taken from the Scandinavian Middle Age carpentry. Harald Bentz Hegseth, aiming at the reconstruction of ancient technologies and documentation of still existing crafts threatened by disappearance, described the movements of a contemporary carpenter at work by using writing systems adapted from choreographers (e.g., the Sutton writing system: Fig. 15.5) and musicians, as those movements could not possibly have been described efficiently in words. He then used the tool marks left on medieval Scandinavian timber to infer the corresponding body movements (Hegseth, 2013 and Fig. 15.6). That the importance of this example goes beyond reconstruction becomes obvious if we consider another example by Mauss: he noticed that French and British soldiers collaborating on the battlefield in World War One were unable to use the spades provided by the other army. 198

bodi that such ethni repre know surge techno 2014) sa fo

f-447; body when fork, 1934

2 Fig. 15.5. Examples of analysis of movement patterns using the Sutton movement writing system (http://www.movernentwriting.org, last accessed July 30, 2014).

3

Fig. 15.6. Reconstruction of bodily movements and rhythm of a medieval craftsperson trimming a timber using a writing system adapted from choreography and music (from Hegseth, 2013: fig. 10.17, resized for better visibility; reproduced with permission from the author).

fer the at the if we oldiers spades

This example, which shows that not even in life-threatening situations are bodiesable to learn quickly how to use newly introduced implements, also implies that the fate of any newly introduced object is dependent, among other factors such as efficiency in relation to various tasks, consequences for social status, ethnicity-related meanings (see above), the socially accepted design and the social representation of the technologies involved (Lemonnier, 1989) - on the embodied knowledge necessary to use it. And the same holds for new technologies: e.g., surgeons adapted with difficulty to the replacement of traditional surgery techniques by laparoscopy (Catalin Vasilescu, surgeon, personal communication 2014). To put it again in Marcel Mauss' terms: 'Toute technique proprement dit a sa forme' (Mauss, 1934 [1936]: 6; see there also further examples). 199

15.5. CONCLUDING

REMARKS

Embodied knowledge adds one further explanation to those already considered with respect to the morphological variation in artefacts. Since it entails bodily movements, which are external, additional information, it conveys to the explanation a higher degree of probability. Probabilities vary according to the degrees of constraint an artefact form puts on the body: the reconstruction of the cutting of the log in the Scandinavian medieval case is compatible with only one set of movements (Fig. 15.6), while the use of the Late Bronze Age small kantharoi is compatible with several (drinking out, albeit from what today would be an uncomfortable position, using a spoon or sticks: Fig. 15.4). At the same time, it is possible to imagine changes in body movements that do not correlate with changes in artefact form: for example, vessel types in use for a long time could be handled in a new way - although I am not aware of any such example. More generally, given that anthropology, sociology, psychology and philosophy already concern themselves with embodied knowledge - albeit not yet to a satisfying extent (Dejarlais, 1992: 37-39; 67-70; 213-215; 247-253; Wamier, 2001) - what could archaeology add to this research? These disciplines, while acknowledging that artefacts change constantly, nevertheless do not analyse artefacts in their own right. Rather they treat artefacts as a given, as being always already there, to be used by people (see also Lemonnier, 1989: 157; Wamier, 2001). Mauss never asked himself why it is that there are different types of military spades - British and French - in the first place. Artefacts are social products entailing a technological chain (chaine operatoire: Sellet, 1993, with further literature), and once produced, they have a social life (Appadurai, 1986). Every step of their existence entails a complex articulation of the material conditionsof life, and people of various social statuses, age and gender, each with their discursive and embodied knowledge, local traditions and intentions. It is archaeology's task to analyse the changes in artefacts considering this complex articulation, as part of explaining the role of artefacts in human social life. Archaeological analyses can target case studies as well as historical process: every decision and change in human history opened up certain possibilities, and at the same time prevented others; what humanity is today worldwide is the result of these various local and supra-regionally intertwining evolutions. This processis of interest also because of contemporary developments. As artists have observed,'the new forms of "demanualization" of art open up the totipotentiality of the handto mechanic and digital forms of general social technique' (Roberts, 2007: 98).These 200

already entails to the to the of the nlyone ntharoi be an

new 'mechanic and digital forms of the general social technique' affect primarily productivelabour over wide areas of the globe, engendering deskilling and as well as new form of skilling, new forms of embodied knowledge, and, in part, new relationsbetween humans and artefacts. Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Prof. Clive Bonsall for commenting on the text and correcting my English, to Dr Gabriela Blebea Nicolae for commenting on the text, to Dr Gh. Al, Niculescu and Dr Aiexandru Dragoman for help with literature, as well as to Dr John E. Robb, Dr Joanna Sofaer and Dr Harald Bentz Hagseth for allowing me to reproduce the illustration in Figs 15.2 and 15.6.

References

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