John Chapman. 2000. Fragmentation in Archaeology: People, Places, and Broken Objects. Routledge, London. 233 pages, plus 51 pages of appendices, notes, and references, and a site and keyword index.
As a child of the eighties (speaking archaeologically, of course), I have an uneasy relationship with post-processual texts.
Postprocessual archaeology, to oversimplify and no doubt enrage some of its proponents, argues two things. First, that the patterning of material culture, that is, where artifacts are found and not found, is the reflection of elements of social aspects of culture, not simply big abstract concepts like population pressure or economic forces or climate changes. The second part of post-processual thought is that trying to find those social aspects takes a willingness to give up the western ideas that are so ingrained in those of us taught in western universities in the 20th century, and to accept alternate explanations from many cultures and many times. Like many many archaeologists of my baby-boomer generation, I think these ideas are interesting and fruitful, but I sometimes have a hard time seeing them in the ground.
Postprocessual archaeology, to oversimplify and no doubt enrage some of its proponents, argues two things. First, that the patterning of material culture, that is, where artifacts are found and not found, is the reflection of elements of social aspects of culture, not simply big abstract concepts like population pressure or economic forces or climate changes. The second part of post-processual thought is that trying to find those social aspects takes a willingness to give up the western ideas that are so ingrained in those of us taught in western universities in the 20th century, and to accept alternate explanations from many cultures and many times. Like many many archaeologists of my baby-boomer generation, I think these ideas are interesting and fruitful, but I sometimes have a hard time seeing them in the ground.
The most successful post-processual books, to my way of thinking, are those that establish an idea, another element to understanding the past that maybe wasn't there before. So interesting, so mind-piquing are the concepts that are examined in these books, that you have to read the books again and again. Such is Fragmentation in Archaeology. This book discusses something I'm uniquely ill-prepared to discuss--the Balkan Mesolithic through Copper ages. The best known site of this period and place is probably Lepenski Vir, a village on the brink of the farming revolution in what is now Serbia (6000-4900 BC).
What Chapman argues is that one social relation reflected in the artifact assemblages of the sites throughout central and eastern Europe of this period is that of the need to maintain ties, with the dead and with places one has left. He argues that when you find half of a figurine, say, in a cemetery plot, or stashed in a hoard in the ruins of a house, it may not be because you didn't dig everything or because it was broken accidentally, or even broken ritually. It may have been broken so that another part of it was kept by the living, or by an individual who left the community, in a way to support both the continued ownership of goodies, and to support one's connections to the society or the dead person left behind. And, during this period of great social upheaval and "progress"--the agricultural revolution and beginning of metallurgy--social connections held a very strong meaning to the people. Chapman calls the process of sharing the wealth in this manner "fragmentation and enchainment," but nevertheless, it's a dang interesting idea.
It's really too bad that ideas of this sort rarely make it into the popular press, because what this kind of idea does for the reader is what the best archaeology does: it indicates both the alienness and the humanity of our collective past. The stuff drives me crazy, because it is so attractive and so elusive at the same time. I think I need to read it again.
