Katina T. Lillios

Objects of Memory: The Ethnography and Archaeology of Heirlooms

With the emergence of chiefdoms, a new ideology of inherited social difference had to be created and sustained over time. One way that inherited social inequalities may have been constructed, legitimated, and maintained is through the transmission of heirlooms or artifacts that objectified a collective ancestral past. Archaeologists have generally viewed heirlooms as anomalies or complications in the archaeological record. In this paper, however, I argue that, if identified, heirlooms have the potential to provide a richer and finer-grained understanding of the human past, in general, and to aid in the determination of hereditary rank, in particular. I discuss and compare the ethnographic evidence for heirloom use in bands, tribes, and chiefdoms, and, based on this evidence, I suggest criteria by which heirlooms might be identified in the archaeological record. Some examples of possible heirlooms from the archaeological literature are also presented. Finally, an evolutionary model for the circulation and disposal of heirlooms is proposed.

Amphibolite tools of the Portuguese Copper Age (3000–2000 B.C.): A geoarchaeological approach to prehistoric economics and symbolism

One of the factors that may have contributed to the emergence of elites during the Copper Age (3000–2000 B.C.) of lowland Portugal was differential access to amphibolite. Amphibolite is a metamorphic rock found in the uplands of western Iberia and was used to make groundstone tools. In order to determine whether lowland communities had unequal access to amphibolite, source areas in western Iberia were analyzed, and groundstone artifacts from four Copper Age sites were studied. At the settlements, amphibolite was found to be the primary raw material used for groundstone tools. However, the proportion of tools made from amphibolite was significantly different among these sites, suggesting that the inhabitants of the sites did not enjoy equal access to amphibolite. Amphibolite tools were rarely found in burials, probably owing to their high value and/or use as heirlooms. Petrographic and geochemical analyses of amphibolites collected in the field demonstrate that the west Iberian source regions, specifically the Morais-Braganca Ophiolite Zone and the Ossa Morena Metavolcanic Zone, are distinctive. The artifacts analyzed were found to be most similar geochemically to the amphibolites collected in the Ossa Morena Zone, particularly from the areas of Arronches and Montemor-o-Novo. These areas were also significant ritual centers during the Neolithic and Copper Ages, suggesting that amphibolite had important symbolic meaning as well as economic value.

The Third Millennium BC in Iberia: Chronometric Evidence for Settlement Histories and Socio-cultural Change

The late third millennium BC was a period of increased socio-political flux not only in eastern Mediterranean, but also among the complex societies of the western Mediterranean. Contemporary with the widespread abandonment of settlements and population transfers in the Nile Valley (First Intermediate Period), Mesopotamia (Akkadian-Ur III), and the Aegean (LHIII), the Iberian Peninsula underwent one of its most dynamic cultural phases. Between about 2500 and 1900 BC, during the transition from the Late Copper Age to the Early Bronze Age, many settlements throughout the peninsula were abandoned or newly established. Although most settlements experienced temporary short-term abandonment episodes during their occupation span, the population dislocations at the end of the Copper Age were of a more permanent nature. Sixteen sites richly dated by radiocarbon show that the settlements in eastern Iberia tended to last shorter and get abandoned earlier than in the more humid west. The difference may have to do more with environmental and climatic factors than with cultural diffusion.

A BIOGRAPHICAL APPROACH TO THE ETHNOGEOLOGY OF LATE PREHISTORIC PORTUGAL

In this paper, I explore the relationship between an artifacts biography and the raw material from which it was made. Specifically, I discuss the biographies of groundstone tools from five Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic (3500-2000 BC) sites in lowland Portugal. An analysis of the formal and material characteristics of tools (totalling over 1300) from these sites indicates that the raw material from which a tool was made not only constrained the form and function of that tool, but also determined, to a large extent, whether that tool would be recycled and the context (settlement V5. burial) in which that tool would be ultimately deposited. I suggest that both the material properties and the socio-symbolic associations of different raw materials might explain the biographies of the artifacts from which they were made.