Archaeology without Borders: Contact, Commerce, and Change in the U.S. Southwest and Northwestern Mexico

10. Interaction, Enculturation, Social Distance, and Ancient Ethnic Identities

Noting abundant evidence of ancient migrations in the American Southwest, a number of researchers have recently called for the development of more sophisticated models of ancient identity and interaction (e.g., Bernardini 2002; Clark 2001; Duff 2002; Lyons 2003; Stone 2003; see also Blake 2004; Jones 1997; Lilley 2004; Meskell 2002). Current approaches can typically be characterized as either “interactionist ” or “enculturationist” in emphasis. The interactionist perspective privileges agency, whereas the enculturationist perspective emphasizes structure. In this chapter we describe the interactionist and enculturationist programs, demonstrate that this dichotomy reflects old theoretical schisms, and argue that attempts to bridge the two perspectives in sociocultural anthropology have much to offer archaeologists. Recognizing the importance of considering both structure and agency in archaeological models of group identity, and based on lessons derived from an ethnographic case study, we suggest a theoretical and methodological focus on social distance. We argue that social distance is a key bridging concept, linking the best of what interactionist and enculturationist perspectives have to offer. Patrick D. Lyons and Jeffery J. Clark Interaction, Enculturation, Social Distance, and Ancient Ethnic Identities 10 185 Patrick D. Lyons and Jeffery J. Clark 186 THE CULTURE HISTORY APPROACH TO ANCIENT SOCIAL GROUPS The culture area methodology employed by early ethnologists was built on the premise that cultural differences were primarily attributable to ecological factors related to subsistence. Although these researchers conceived of cultures as bounded entities indicated by trait distributions, they cautioned that boundaries between groups were usually indistinct, that trait distributions often overlapped, and that historical factors such as migration and diffusion accounted for some spatial patterns (see, e.g., Holmes 1914; Kroeber 1939; Wissler 1926). Archaeologists working within the culture history paradigm (e.g., Colton 1939; Gladwin and Gladwin 1934; McKern 1939), which was derived from the culture area approach, used spatial and temporal patterns in material culture to define ancient social groups. Early practitioners of the New Archaeology criticized culture historians for their neglect of process and urged their colleagues to focus on why cultural systems developed, how they functioned, and how they changed through time (e.g., Binford 1962). Recently, a new set of criticisms has been leveled. Andrew Duff (2002), for example, has warned that demographic and historical factors affect the degree to which material culture variability reflects social boundaries. This critique is an outgrowth of an old theoretical tension in anthropology, between structure (i.e., shared norms, values, ways of making and doing things) and agency (i.e., strategic and situational manipulation of social capital and identities by individuals or groups). Advances in method and theory over the last thirty years, which include recognizing the dynamics of structure and agency (e.g., Bourdieu 1977; Giddens 1979, 1984; Ortner 1984; Sewell 1992) and the development of communication-based models of style (e.g., Wobst 1977), have resulted in two reactions to the culture history approach. The first is manifest in the literature as the interactionist perspective , an alternative that emphasizes agency over structure. The second is labeled here the enculturationist perspective, a refined, sophisticated restatement of the culture history model that emphasizes structure over agency. THE INTERACTIONIST PERSPECTIVE The interactionist approach recognizes humans as actors or agents who negotiate identities within a complex milieu of social resources and constraints (see Stone 2003). Archaeologists working from an interactionist perspective model group boundaries and shared identities based on evidence of regular interaction, assuming that such behavior reflects intentional, strategic action (e.g., Braun and Plog 1982; Duff 2002; Hantman and Plog 1982; Plog 1980; Upham 1982; Upham, Lightfoot, and Feinman 1981). The interactionist perspective, in most cases, entails a particular approach to stylistic variation in the archaeological record and lends itself to a focus on exchange as a measure of interaction. Interaction, Enculturation, Social Distance, and Ancient Ethnic Identities 187 Style, Interaction, and Group Boundaries As Michelle Hegmon (1992) has shown, there are nearly as many definitions of style as there are archaeologists studying this phenomenon. Definitions differ mainly in terms of their relative emphasis on the communicative aspect of style (Wobst 1977). Some archaeologists conceive of style largely as a passive reflection of social groups encoded through interaction (e.g., Sackett 1982), whereas others see it as an active means of “messaging”—of communicating or negotiating group membership (e.g., Wiessner 1984), statuses (e.g., Ferguson 1991; Miller 1982, 1985; Pauketat and Emerson 1991), and worldview (e.g., Wyckoff 1990) or of reinforcing group norms (e...