Transferring Technological Knowledge: Becoming Craft Specialists and Craft Items through Ritual Reproduction

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Movement of Technical Knowledge: Cross-Craft Perspectives on Mobility and Knowledge in Production Technologies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

How do we identify the transfer of technological knowledge on the local scale and how it might change through time and in regional contexts? The Gamo of southern Ethiopia offer that their Indigenous way of knowing the world enlightens understanding of transformations in technology and technological knowledge. All matter—human and non-human move and transform, which is evidence of their life force. Humans and materials transform through reproduction, which instigates change. Reproduction may be through biology, earthly interaction, or ritual. Rituals of technology and human rites of passage parallel the Gamo perceived life cycle of birth, circumcision, seclusion, and death. Humans only begin to engage in the transformation of material culture once they have proceeded through puberty rights of passage and have become full members of society. The ritual processes of how a human proceeds through rites of passage determines their status as either farmer or craft specialist. Similarly houses, food, iron tools, pottery, leather goods, and stone scrapers transform through technological rituals accessing different statuses of prestige and different forms and locations on the landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Movement of Technical Knowledge: Cross-Craft Perspectives on Mobility and Knowledge in Production Technologies   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23779