The Archaeology of Personhood ~ An anthropological approach

Chris Fowler0415317223, 9780415317221, 0415317215, 9780415317214, 9780203583210

The Archaeology of Personhood discusses what it means to be human and, by drawing on examples from European prehistory, discusses the implications that contemporary understandings of personhood have on archaeological interpretation.

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Table of contents :
BOOK COVER……Page 1
HALF-TITLE……Page 2
TITLE……Page 4
COPYRIGHT……Page 5
CONTENTS……Page 6
ILLUSTRATIONS……Page 7
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……Page 8
Bodies, persons and the modern world……Page 9
Personhood beyond the individual……Page 11
The structure of this book……Page 13
Individual, world and society: the emergence of the indivisible individual……Page 15
Individuality and individualism……Page 17
Archaeological routes……Page 18
The value of ethnographic constructs……Page 19
Conclusion……Page 20
Dividual personhood in India……Page 22
Dividual and partible personhood in Melanesia……Page 23
Permeable personhood in India……Page 27
Reconciling trends in dividual and individual personhood……Page 28
Bodies and social technologies……Page 30
Gendering and personhood……Page 32
Personhood, caste and religion……Page 34
Moving up a scale: fractal personhood……Page 35
Fractal personhood in Melanesia……Page 36
Fractals and representation……Page 37
Conclusion……Page 38
Gifts: objects as parts of people……Page 39
Objects mediate exchange……Page 40
Objects as people……Page 42
Biography and inalienable objects……Page 45
Partibility and fragmentation……Page 46
Composite objects and the reintegration of parts……Page 48
Interpreting personhood from material statements: ambiguous relations……Page 50
Conclusion……Page 51
The ritual process……Page 52
The death of the modern individual: a historical perspective……Page 53
Death and the transformation of the aspects of the person: the fate of dividual and partible persons……Page 56
Death as sacrifice and cosmogony: transformation of the Hindu person……Page 59
Summary: modes of personhood, ways of death……Page 60
Why death is not an inversion of life, but part of the social negotiation of life……Page 61
Conclusion……Page 62
Substance, form and the public body……Page 64
Substance and the emergence of the indivisible body……Page 65
Transmission of substance as descent……Page 66
Transmission of substances in ongoing relations……Page 67
Metaphor and fractals: human bodies alongside others……Page 68
Unmediated exchange, dividuality, and the transmission of substance……Page 69
Substances, objects and personhood in European prehistory……Page 70
Animals and other natural things as persons: body, form and relationship……Page 73
Naturalism, totemism and animism……Page 74
Predation, protection and reciprocity: attitudes towards others and means of acquiring substance……Page 77
Conclusion……Page 78
Locating the Ertebølle……Page 79
Mortuary practices as transformations……Page 80
Material culture and body parts……Page 82
Composite objects and reconfigured relationships……Page 83
Paths, tasks and places……Page 84
Closer interpretations? Analogy, context and the direct historical approach……Page 85
Humans and animals……Page 87
Articulating identities and relational personhood……Page 89
Personhood and social strategies: gender and age……Page 90
Attitude……Page 91
Conclusion……Page 92
From ethnographic basis to archaeological framework……Page 93
Personhood, agency and individuals……Page 94
Ambiguity, personhood, community and cosmos……Page 95
Personhood and the archaeological imagination……Page 96
REFERENCES……Page 97
INDEX……Page 107