via Penn Today, 29 July 2021: An interview with Joyce White and Elizabeth Hamilton on their recent paper in Archaeological Research in Asia.
In archaeometallurgy, the study of ancient metal, archaeologists have historically taken a top-down approach, meaning that the jewelry, tools, weapons, and other artifacts they discover have come to signify a dominant ruling group that exerted overarching control over how to use such resources.
The Penn Museum’s Joyce White and Elizabeth Hamilton have a different idea.
In an open-access article in Archaeological Research in Asia, the researchers argue that in Southeast Asia, where they have conducted the bulk of their work, communities actually took a bottom-up approach, each deciding how to use these precious resources rather than being told what to do with them. The article highlights key findings from a four-volume monograph suite being published by Penn Press.
“A progressive view of human development originating in 19th-century perceptions of cultural evolution gets told over and over again. But it doesn’t work well when you look at areas in closer and finer detail,” says White, director of the Museum’s Ban Chiang Project and an adjunct professor in Penn’s Department of Anthropology. “We should be looking at cultural development in fine-grained ways analogous to genetics, natural selection, the nitty gritty mechanisms by which cultures evolved.”
Source: Metal artifacts in Southeast Asia challenge long-held archaeological theory | Penn Today
