Marcia-Anne Dobres’ “Gender and Prehistoric Technology: On the Social Agency of Technical Strategies” attempts to provide theoretical space and methodology for studying gendered social agency of prehistoric technologies. Dobres tries to test the possibility and practicability of applying such a method by examining bone and antler technologies of the Upper Paleolithic. She concludes that Late Magdalenian tool producers not only solved problems but also expressed various social interests through material tool production.
Dobres stresses that the symbolic production of technology has long been downplayed by traditional considerations of tool production as “primarily about making and using raw materials” (27). She argues that the use and production of technology involves a complex system of interactions between social actors, expressions of social relations, and a re-creation of the social actor’s material world. According to Dobres, because technology relies on social relations of production, it is “a materially grounded arena for dynamic social interaction involved in the planning, production, use, repair and discard of material culture” (27). She argues that technology embodies cultural attitudes about production and use and therefore expresses a material manifestation of social ‘rules’.
She also discusses the importance of different macro and micro scale contexts of tool production. Macroscale refers to the environmental conditions and constraints imposed by nature on tool production as well as functional requirements of technology. Microscale context refers to the intimate daily interactions that occur during manufacture, use, repair or discard of the tool. Being the subject of Dobres’ study, microscale context reveals that different people will act differently towards one another depending on their relation to each other, the activity they are undertaking, and their location (29).
Dobres criticizes the traditional macro-regional study of traditional research on European Late Paleolithic artifacts and argues that they are too typological, transforming heterogeneous assemblages into homogenous artifact “types”. In attempting to find norms of technique, manufacture and morphology, traditional studies divide assemblages in “types”. This is argued to result in the studying tools “out of their original and archaeological contexts” (30). In order to overcome this, Dobres proposes a methodology that links production strategies to social relations in attempt to “infer the organizational dynamics of the concomitant production activities pursued at several sites” (31). She proposes a hierarchical system to study attributes of six different organic categories of artifacts. The data was subsequently organized along different axes: artifact class, morphology, raw material, inferred function, site-specific composite assemblage, and comparatively across regions (31-2).
Her results infer standardized shaft widths for harpoons, bone points and bone needles in morphologically similar zones with different types of deviation per site. That is, there are a variety of technical strategies employed to make, use, and repair the technology recovered. The variable patterning of shaft width at various sites suggests that function and raw material does not explain the differences observed (33). Dobres proposes that “gendered identities were an especially dynamic set of social relations intimately involved in the practice of Late Magdalenian bone and antler artifact production and use” and that the observed variability is “linked with gender relations through the social agency of technical strategies” (34).
The La Vache site was shown to have a significant amount of repair (20%) in comparison to neighboring sites. La Vache boasts a site-specific technique of harpoon base preparation (for hafting) as well as a great diversity in strategy for cutting harpoon barbs. Dobres attempts to understand how this variability in production relates to the diversity of the producers and how they might have positioned themselves throughout the production and repair processes. This, according to Dobres, can only be reached through a regional comparative approach. This led to analysis of the Mas d’Azil site, which reveals initial blank production as being the main technological process occurring at that site (repair being almost non-existent). This is argued by Dobres to suggest “a different intensity of social relations” and different “organization and dynamic quality of interpersonal relations of production…at these two sites” (39-40). She argues that gendered divisions of labor would have communicated, “power, rank and social status through material means and [through the] specific activities taking place” (40).
The regional variability found suggests flexibility in social conduct that varied according to the context. Dobres argues that if social mechanisms existed to control material and social rules of technological production (for example, tool production being ascribed according to gender, age or social position) there would not be evidence of technological variation to the degree found in the French Pyrénées (41). This would explain both regional variability in technique as well as degrees of variability across artifact types.
Finally Dobres argues that technological production served to produce more than material tools but also to establish and negotiate identity and social status/position. The production of tools also produces “gendered subjects” without necessarily attributing one artifact type or technical strategy to a gender (42).
Marcia-Anne Dobres provides an interesting and refreshing attempt to examine technology production within the conceptual framework of social identity and social agency. There are however several drawbacks to her arguments.
Although she attempts to provide definitions throughout her paper, they are scarcely sufficiently explained. They are often limited and redundant. For example, her definition of social agency “as a dynamic process involving acts of gendered identity, affiliation and differentiation” make statements such as “…studying the gendered social agency of prehistoric technology” redundant and unnecessarily confusing. If social agency by definition entails gendered identity, what or why is “gendered social agency” used? Is this something different form social agency?
Her attempt to argue for social agency in technology and tool production seem valid but becomes problematic when she defines technology in a way that “highlights the web interweaving the social, material and symbolic dimensions of material culture production”(26). She essentially attempts to argue something (social agency in technology) that is made true by virtue of a definition (technology as composed of social, material and symbolic dimensions). Although a technical detail, a series of similar tautologies exist throughout the paper. These confuse the reader into circulatory arguments that take away from some of the author’s valid points.
Dobres argues traditional Upper Paleolithic technological studies as being “narrowly typological” and focused on the “macro-regional trends and norms” (30). This might be argued to stem from a conflict in interests. Dobres is clearly interested in the social interactions and identities forged and negotiated through tool production. However, Upper Paleolithic technological studies are not as simplistic as Dobres seems to imply. It should be noted that the Upper Paleolithic is characterized by a surge in complex burials, the disappearance of H. Neanderthalensis and appearance of Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH). This greatly complicates the picture and adds significant weight on the importance of technological differences and artifact “types” as they may reveal a site’s inhabitants as well as traces of exchange or acculturation.
Her concern that site-specific composite assemblages are rarely studied is valid and would definitely handicap any conclusions made. Evidence of the extent to which assemblages as a whole are not studied by traditionalists is not provided and therefore her claim that such a critical holistic perspective is ignored seems unfounded.
It is questionable if Dobres’ methodology and technique of study is actually any different than that of traditional studies of technology. It is true that her methodology incorporates more components, but how many? And how well defined as her ‘empirical axes’?
Her only addition seems to be the inclusion of “site-specific composite assemblage”. She does not explain what “artifact class” or “artifact morphology” entails nor how it differs from artifact “types”. From a reader’s perspective, and without additional explanation, these seem identical. Furthermore, her criticism of traditional technology studies for employing or “aiming for” macro-regional analyses to discover patterns of production technique and morphology becomes confusing when she claims that “to make sense of technical strategies in terms of social actors requires comparative and regional orientation” (37). Is this not the same methodology? The difference not well explained.
Dobres does not provide specific information on the assemblage found at La Vache and Mas d’Azil nor does she discuss the distance between “neighboring sites”. The differences in activities and artifacts within the site have various possible explanations (for example different peoples, different function of sites, proximity to raw material etc.) but a lack of data makes the suggestion of anything other than what the author proposes impossible to found. Furthermore, little stratigraphic information is given and the “variety” found at the sites is not clearly defined as being found in a single layer. Information regarding the integrity of stratigraphy is not provided nor is the number of occupations.
The use of the word “gender” throughout the paper seems irrelevant. She largely argues for social agency, which includes acts of gendered identity (among other things), but yet distinguishes gendered identity throughout the paper (by explicitly using the word gender) from the other components of social agency. This is contradicting and confusing as it seems to step away from the holistic social perspective that she initially attempts to provide and openly criticizes traditional technological studies for not doing. Furthermore, she asserts that gender played a specific role in the dynamics of tool production yet she does not explore that role nor does she link it to her evidence.
Finally, although she provides an interesting take on technology production, it is questionable if any of her assertions are actually novel to archaeology. Her criticism of traditional technological studies seems to suggest that there is a serious lack of in-site composite assemblage study and how this reveals differences in social agency. But did archaeology every really doubt social agency in tool production? Regardless, Dobres’ attempt to bring social agency to the forefront of her research and insuring that it is not forgotten is appreciated- despite some of its drawbacks.
Works Cited
Dobres, Marcia-Anne
1995 Gender and Prehistoric Technology: On the Social Agency of Technical Strategies. World Archaeology 27(1): 25-49.
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