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THREE. Biographies
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three with Alexander P. Woods Despite the brilliant creativity they often display, the engraved plaques of Iberia have traditionally been viewed as static entities. Prehistorians have rarely considered the technical skills, cognitive decisions , social relationships, and embodied knowledge that were activated to produce them and that generated their distribution throughout southwestern Iberia. Their biographies—their raw material acquisition, manufacture, distribution, and consumption by skilled and social actors in a dynamic historical and sociopolitical landscape—have generally been ignored. As with the life histories of people, the life histories of objects are the outcome of social structuring forces as well as the properties inherent in their materiality (Dietler and Herbich 1998). Thus the plaques were objects acted upon by knowledgeable cultural beings as well as agents that stimulated and provoked social actions , memories, and kinesthetic behaviors. Throughout the plaques’ transformation from a body of raw material into a finished object of visual culture, their makers deployed knowledge, bodily gestures, and technical skills. Different responses —both mental and physical—and varying degrees of sociality and performativity (Carter 2004) were provoked in the creation of the plaques, engaging the producers and those observing them. This theme of the dualism of material culture is developed throughout this book. In this chapter I explore the life histories of the plaques. To animate their biography , I draw from a range of methodologies and analytical tools, including experimental replication, use-wear studies, and stylistic analyses of the artifacts. I articulate the chaîne opératoire approach of André Leroi-Gourhan (1993), with a concern for the formation processes of Michael Schiffer (1987), and a biographical methodology espoused by Arjun Appadurai (1986) and Igor Kopytoff (1986), addressing the economic, social, technical, and ritual pathways of the plaques. Certainly the biographies of artifacts extend into the present with their representation through excavation, study, illustration, publication, and display (Holtorf 1998, 2005), as summarized in Chapter 1. As with all life histories, there are and will always be many missing pieces. In initiating this inquiry into the plaques’ material and social lives, however, questions and insights will be generated that scholars in the future may be able to pursue. biogr aphies The vast majority of the Iberian engraved plaques were made from slate. Only 5 percent of the plaques in ESPRIT were made from other materials, such as sandstone and schist. All these raw materials are found in the undulating plains of western Iberia (Figure 3.1). There is not, however, a 1:1 correlation between a plaque find spot and a local outcrop of its raw material. In other words, not all engraved plaques are found near slate, schist, or sandstone; nor are all regions of west Iberia with slate, schist, or sandstone outcrops associated with engraved plaques. This indicates that the engraved plaque phenomenon cannot simply be explained in terms of raw material availability. The mere existence of a slate outcrop did not stimulate the local production of engraved plaques. Rather, a specific combination of factors and needs—whether they were demographic, economic, political, or ideological—came together to cause certain groups to engage in the extraction, manufacture, and/or acquisition of engraved plaques. Because groups probably had different methods by which to access the raw materials and their finished products, the social and symbolic meaning of the plaques likely varied over space. For the purposes of this discussion, I focus on the processing of slate, because it was the predominant raw material used to make the plaques. Geologically, slate is defined as a “compact, fine-grained metamorphic rock,” which has a “slaty cleavage and thus can be split into slabs and thin plates” (Bates and Jackson 1984:471). Slates are formed by the low-grade metamorphism of shales, mudstones, and finegrained tuffs and can occur in association with other metamorphic rocks. Slate is abundantly found throughout Portugal and western Spain. In fact the buildings of many villages in Portugal and Spain that are popular tourist destinations, such as Monsaraz (Évora) and Piodão (Coimbra), are largely made of slate (Figure 3.2). Today the slate industry is a significant component of the economy of both countries (Instituto Tecnológico GeoMinero de España 1994). In 1997 Spain was the largest producer of roofing slates in the world (García-Guinea et al. 1997), with major quarries in Badajoz (Pizarras Vilar del Rey) and Orense. Because slate is such an important commodity in the Portuguese and Spanish economies, slate outcrops throughout...