Does practice make perfect? Is it possible to read technological development in the actions and outputs of individual or group practitioners

Summary

No smelter of iron, industrial or pre-industrial, expends energy in gathering raw materials, designing, building and running a furnace without the intention of producing useable metallic iron at the end of the process. Therefore their work is ultimately driven by a success imperative. At a macro, cultural-scale technological development may be readily discernable through indicators such as material/alloy properties, artefact traits and production levels. However, change is brought about by individual or small group actions, whether incremental or fundamental, and actions are rooted in more than one origin. This paper considers the interplay between actions derived from inherited and established practice, ease (convenience), idiosyncrasy (personality) and optimisation (conscious trial and error) and explores what opportunities may exist to detect these in the archaeological record. Two examples will be examined; the macro-morphology of smelting sites and residues, and the micro-morphology of tap slags produced during experimental smelting.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Micro-worlds, materiality and human behaviour: Magnifying material science in explanations of technology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage