Research perspectives and their influence for typologies

Abstract

This contribution opens with a brief reflection on theoretical archaeology and practical material classification activities. Following this, the various questions that can be asked of the finds to be classified and how they condition the construction of typologies will be briefly addressed. Questions on chronology and technology; questions on the techno-anthropological context of use that force us to raise our gaze from the individual artefact to the surrounding universe; questions on the social use of artefacts (for distinctions of rank, gender, age, etc., but also for interactions aimed at establishing, or overcoming, limits and boundaries); questions on artefacts as means of exchange (of goods, but also of information or values); questions on what people thought of the artefacts they had (importance, but also indifference or rejection). An example, resulting from an archaeological excavation, will show that everything also holds in the attempt to move from our ethical classifications to emic classifications closer to the thinking of the ancients.

In conclusion, a brief reflection is proposed on the importance of distinguishing not only types but variants and special cases; on the usefulness of moving from reflections on agency to reflections extended to habitus; on the definition of material culture as a complex object of investigation.