Identity in objects

In this article, Sassaman looks at the social organization of the Stallings Culture found in the Savannah River valley around 4000 years ago. In this process, he looks at two types of artifacts, namely pots and bannerstones and, by measuring spatial differences in their decoration or manufacture, he attempts to recreate their inter- and intra-group social system.

Sassaman starts by examining rims of coastal pottery, on which one can see differences between right-handed and left-handed maker. The totality of the sample, including 600 rim sherds from 27 sites show that about 10% of the sample have been made by left-handed makers, percentage that fits with the modern and historical worldwide rate of left-handedness. What is interesting is that percentages of left-handedness varie from one site to the next. Sassaman links this result to matrilocality, as it is said that handedness is influenced by maternal ties (Ashton 1982; Carter-Saltzman 1980; Porac et al. 1986). In an environment where mothers and daughters live together, the rate of left-handedness would increase after a few generations. Thus, Sassaman uses pots sherds to conclude that coastal Stallings Cultures were living in a matrilocal system.

There are several incorrect things with this reasoning. The first and most obvious would be that a high rate of left-handedness seen in pots sherds does not equate a high rate of left-handed people in the population. Sassaman seems to assume that each sherd has been produced by a different person, which is probably not the case. As Sassaman does not clarify if the sherds were regrouped when found to be from single pots, we have no way of knowing if the majority of the sherds they examined in a particular site were not coming from one pot made by a left-handed individual. Differences in designs should be considered in order to distinguish between makers and better evaluate the number of left-handed people at each site.

The second difficulty with this reasoning is the simple fact of equating an object with a social organization. I can see how Sassaman comes to the conclusion that Coastal Stallings were matrilocal. It is a plausible scenario, but the reasoning that led to this conclusion is quite stretched. As mentioned earlier, the rate of left-handed people is not assured for those sites. However, for the sake of this critic, if we take for granted that Sassaman was right on that point, that there was actually a higher rate of left-handed people at particular Stallings sites, we have no way of knowing for sure that this handedness was influenced by females. It could have been influenced by males, and in that situation, we would conclude that those groups were following a patrilocal settlement pattern.

At this point, one could say that Sassaman supports his assumption of female influence on handedness by citing three scientific studies (Ashton 1982; Carter-Saltzman 1980; Porac et al. 1986), thus that this comportment is found somewhere. What I have to answer to this is… yes, it is found somewhere and the opposite is probably the case as well. If there is one thing I’ve learned from the seminar we’re following, it is that there is extreme variability in hunter-gatherers’ organization.

The second type of artifacts looked at in this article is called ‘bannerstone’. The bannerstones are pierced stones of unknown function. They were found primarily in the Piedmont Region and were, according to Sassaman, used for some form of trade. He explains that those type of stones were manufactured in the periphery, by marginalized people who searched for alliances elsewhere. When their trading partners faded away (the Mill Branch affiliation), they abandoned their technology and integrated the Stallings Culture. This would have coincided with the heyday of the Stallings “drag-and-jab” pottery…

Again here, I find that Sassaman is quick at making conclusions. The appearance of the Mill Branch people at the second to last page of the paper confused me. I do not doubt that trade between Piedmont and Mill Branch sites would have been possible, but the data given to the reader is too thin to evaluate this assumption.

Moreover, Sassaman here again uses an object to “evaluate” the behavior of the makers. The claim of marginalization of bannerstones makers based on their geographic distribution would need other data to be supported.

This is an interesting paper. The evaluation of handedness in artifacts is an important process that should be applied to other types of artifacts. The results of left-handedness rates, if unbiased, would show an intriguing pattern. However, I think that we should be careful in jumping to conclusions based on the presence of one pattern that is visible in the ethnographic record. We have to keep in mind that variability is present and that different techniques can lead to similar products…

References:

Ashton, G.C. 1982. Handedness: an alternative hypothesis, Behavior genetics 12:125-147

Carter-Saltzman, P. 1980. Biological and sociocultural effects on handedness: comparison between biological and adoptive families, Science 209:1263-1265

Porac, C. S. Coren, and A. Searleman. 1986. Environmental factors in hand preference formation: evidence from attempts to switch the preferred hand, Behavior genetics 16:251-261

Sassaman, K.E. 1998. Crafting Cultural Identity in Hunter-Gatherer Economies, Archaeological papers of the American Anthropological Association 8(1):93-107