On why we still need ethnoarchaeology

Summary

Although ethnoarchaeology is viewed as an important tool of analogy for the archaeological record, it has been criticized as being too descriptive, context bound, and limited by the generation of cautionary tales. These and other criticisms have inadvertently led to a sharp decline in ethnoarchaeological research in recent times. In this paper I argue that ethnoarchaeology is an underutilized methodology that can be expanded with new technologies to test and shed light on the nature of important factors that are often identified as prime catalysts of sociocultural change. Here I demonstrate this potential by presenting ethnoarchaeological data on the changes the nature of food sharing- an often cited "leveling mechanism" that sustains egalitarianism in small scale societies. Disruption of sharing and egalitarian ideals are often viewed as one of the pressures giving rise to social inequalities. Comparative analyses of these data show when and how food sharing dissolves in response to different external pressures, including ecological degradation.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• "Bones are Not Enough": Research in Honor of Diane Gifford-Gonzalez   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage