Mary,
Well . . . I'm not sure why this would be astounding. One might see this stream of conversation as the product of "informants" providing ethnographic data on the contexts and uses (not to say "functions") of certain objects from their own childhoods, and on their memories and understandings of socio-historical traditions regarding objects with similar morphological characteristics. Those data could, then, be tested for temporal and spatial accuracy through additional, perhaps more systematic, data collection using both ethnographic and archaeological methods. However, as someone who has participated in more than a couple of ethnographic interviews hoping for information that might be useful in archaeological interpretation, I have witnessed a number of such free-flowing, stream-of-consciousness discussions whose directions could only barely -- if at all -- be controlled by the interviewers. The information so gathered is of no less value just because the interviews did not proceed like Dragnet testimony ("Just the facts, ma'am"). Mind you, I'm no post-modernist, I hope for objectivity, and I like my systematic, structured data collection as much as the next archaeologist, but I cannot see how this conversation constitutes "the tendency to universalize human experience." Quite to the contrary, in fact -- I see informants who are members of the same "national" socio-cultural structure, but of different communities and other sub-groups, pointing out both similarities and differences in the contexts and uses (again, not to say "function") of childhood toys. Those similarities and differences are, according to the information so far obtained, both temporal and spatial, and might provide testable models for use by both ethnographers and archaeologists working, perhaps first, with questions involving mid- to late-20th century contexts and, perhaps later, with questions involving older contexts or contexts that cross-cut nationality. This may be particularly important in light of the early parts of this conversation that involved the interaction of legislative temporal mandates for cultural resources investigations and the ages of individual archaeologists conducting those investigations (i.e., digging up my own childhood).
I wonder if we're not seeing the old emic-etic debate here, perhaps positing the notion that anthropologists (including archaeologists) should be non-participant observers. However, I'm not clear on why anthropologists would not be valuable informants in their own right. Since we, too, are living, breathing human beings (with a couple of exceptions, but we won't go into that), our recognition of our own life-experiences does not, in and of itself, constitute "presentism" or "essentializing schema" in our work, although, to be sure, we must be careful to be objective about the impacts of our own experiences in our investigations (but isn't that always the case?).
Having said all that, I, for one, would love to receive your bib of references that would aid in interpretation of "toys" in archaeological contexts. If there is a general agreement on hist-arch, I'd suggest you make it available to all. If not, please send it to me off-list. And thanks,
Jeff
Jeffrey L. Boyer, RPA
Office of Archaeological Studies
P.O. Box 2087
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87504
tel: 505.827.6343
fax: 505.827.3904
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
"It might look a bit messy now, but just you come back in 500 years time." --Terry Pratchett
________________________________
From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY on behalf of Mary C. Beaudry
Sent: Tue 11/1/2005 5:47 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Archaeological Toys
I am astounded by this thread. Contextual analysis might encourage
reflexivity, but I do not think that our own childhoods should form
the basis for artifact interpretation, unless, of course, we are just
analyzing ourselves (which is fine, so long as it is not disguised as
the study of 19th-century or other childhoods). The variability of
experiences among list members underscores my point that we must
attend to context and avoid the tendency to universalize human
experience.
There is a growing body of literature on the archaeology of children
and childhood as well as a substantial body of literature on artifact
interpretation that explicitly rejects one-to-one formulations of
artifacts according to function, gender associations, age, etc., and
of the approaches that posit rigid connections between objects and
their meanings and uses (e.g., boys with marbles-marbles often used
by adults for gambling, for instance-archaeological, cultural, and
historical context of finds fosters nuanced interpretations).
A good example of a contextual, interpretive analysis of marbles is
Yamin's article in the International Journal of Historical
Archaeology (forget exact citation). There's Jane Baxter's book on
the archaeology of childhood, Laurie Wilkie's & the Praetzellises'
work, etc., etc. Anthropological archaeologists had, I thought,
developed techniques for avoiding presentism and are attempting to
avoid essentializing schema in their work.
I can provide a bibliography (on interpretation, not just
identification) if list members are interested.
MCB
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