Archaeology and Apprenticeship: Body Knowledge, Identity, and Communities of Practice

2. Apprenticeship and the Confirmation of Social Boundaries

20 CHAPTER TWO Apprenticeship and the Confirmation of Social Boundaries Hélène Wallaert Many paths can be followed to reach a full understanding of the complexity of craft production looking at apprenticeship procedures. To clarify the role of teaching and learning in the shaping of cultural identity and the reproduction of styles, a double case study explores apprenticeship through pottery making in New Mexico pueblos and in northern Cameroon villages. In the archaeological literature of the past fifty years, a large number of research projects have investigated the mechanisms responsible for the elaboration and duplication of technological styles. The initiators of Ceramic Ecology were among the first to focus on the contexts of craft production, pointing out the relationship between environmental constraints and cultural imperatives and their impact on the development of ceramic styles. Each action taken by a craftsman, at every step of the chaîne opératoire, was seen as reflecting his social position conditioned by his natural habitat (Arnold 1975). Apprenticeship was reduced to a set of simple duplicated rules largely dependent on that habitat. This theory did not explain why groups of craftsmen sharing a same habitat might develop different techniques and technological behaviors. Numbers of ethnological observations showed that pressure from the habitat does not always determine educative choices (Herbich and Dietler 1991). Apprenticeship and the Confirmation of Social Boundaries 21 Ceramic Sociology went a step further and centered its researches on the persistence and diffusion of ornamental styles as a reflection of social interactions among members of a craft production group (Longacre 1970). The study of ceramic styles focused on designs and surface treatments , while technological aspects of the products and production process were considered secondary. The stability of material styles of a given community, either a residency unit or a group of individuals, was considered to be increasing when relationships during apprenticeship were stable and the geographical or social distance of the protagonists limited. Style would thus allow the determination of interethnic limits. This theoretical concept was observed in the field by several researchers (Pryor and Carr 1995; Deboer 1990; Wiessner 1983) who pointed out the importance of mother–child relationships in the shaping of style. This approach showed to be too restrictive, however, because it reduced apprenticeship to a process of impregnation without any active part played by the apprentice. New Archaeology developed another approach by looking for universal mechanisms responsible for the variations of style. This implies a study on a linguistic level: decorative motives were seen as decodable phonemes (McGovern 1986; Schiffer and Skibo 1987). Stylistic variations would be studied only through decoration and surface treatments that reflect the will of the producers to communicate to others and spread their culture. However, numerous ethnological studies have shown that stylistic variations were not always meant to consciously communicate. The multiple roles of styles are debated, but the necessity to fully appreciate their contribution to the creation of social boundaries is emphasized in many studies related to anthropological archaeology. This research is largely inspired by the work of the late Carol Kramer and other colleagues, including Nicholas David, Scott MacEachern, and Marcia-Anne Dobres. It follows the path of others involved in projects employing ethnographical studies of material culture production in living contexts (David and Kramer 2001; Dobres and Hoffman 1999; Kramer 1985; MacEachern 1996). Even while the debate around the nature of style continues, we can agree that technical knowledge is expressed partly through recognizable traditions that are passed on, from one generation to the next, through conscious and unconscious processes (Dietler and Herbich 1994; Wiessner 1983). Technological studies have shown that each step of the chaîne opératoire, and every technical behavior participates in the elaboration of the habitus, as described by Bourdieu (1980), and thus to style. Traditions, as expressions of culture, serve largely as vectors for cultural transmission. Furthermore, the messages that styles are said to carry not only may signal identity to outsiders but also may strengthen a sense of membership within the group of producers itself (David et al. 22 Archaeology and Apprenticeship 1988; Hodder 1988; MacEachern 1998). In that case, styles establish the existence and recognition of producers as a specific social and/or technical unit. Keeping in mind the complexity of these processes, we recognize that, within a given society, many facets of the multiple aspects of styles can be expressed simultaneously and on different levels. We should also integrate...