The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective by Arjun Appadurai

Author:Arjun Appadurai [Appadurai, Arjun]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1986-04-30T07:00:00+00:00

Notes

I should like to acknowledge the useful comments made on the first draft of this paper by Arjun Appadurai and Robert C. Hunt, as well as by other members of the symposium.

1.In “exchange value,” for instance, value is a descriptive term, specifying what has been observed to happen in certain exchange transactions. I would argue that the distinction between emic and etic, although useful in some ways, should not be allowed to dominate research. I am in broad agreement with Binford’s view, which boils down to an assertion that what counts is what happens rather than what people think about what happens. Yet clearly the latter does and did influence the former. We use theoretical concepts in many areas of our discipline, and are not debarred from doing so in the field of cognition by any a priori principle. The real danger is, however, of circular reasoning, of the kind so often found to surround the use of such concepts as adaptation and contradiction.

2.The question of whether gravegoods accompanying a deceased person necessarily imply an association while that person was alive has indeed been discussed in recent years. The more interesting issue of the way such an association with special material goods during life may have been indicative of high status has not. If an adequate framework for analysis can be developed (and the contributions in this direction of Winters 1968, S. Shennan 1975, and O’Shea 1978 among others should be noted), then there are good prospects for learning much more of the social behavior of early societies.

3.This is certainly true of the long use of copper in the Aegean late neolithic, when it had a very minimal impact, and of its use, for instance in the Balkans, during the Vinca-Turdas period, when there are not infrequent finds of small objects but no explosive development until much later, during the Vinca-Plocnik phase.

4.The curious gold astragalus of Grave 36, weighing 33 grams, appears to be the heaviest single gold object in the cemetery, although it is only two centimeters long; I predict that metallographic examination will show it to have been shaped from a nugget by hammering rather than by casting.

5.We must refer also to the marble objects at Varna. They include not only simple bowls (for example in Grave 36), known from other Balkan chalcolithic contexts, but a pointed vessel from Grave 41 that has points of resemblance with a find from the Kephala cemetery in the Cycladic Islands. These vessels have been used by some scholars to reopen the question of possible contacts between the chalcolithic Balkans and the Aegean bronze age. But the chronological question is now largely settled, and the only difficulty seems to be the reported presence of Early Helladic II pottery at the Thessalian site of Pevkakia in association with late neolithic/chalcolithic black-on-red painted (“Galepsos”) ware. At Sitagroi such painted pottery was a frequent feature in phase III, and the Pevkakia material is closely similar. It is the status, or rather the stratigraphic context, of the Early Helladic II pottery at Pevkakia that must be questioned.

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