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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2023

Techno-typology: a tool for understanding Bronze Age metalworkers’ identities and organisations

Résumé

As direct archaeological traces of Bronze Age metalworkers’ activities are very limited compared to the amount of metalwork known for this period, craftsmen remain to a large extent anonymous. Their identities and organisation have been mostly studied indirectly by examining their productions. There is indeed a long-lasting research tradition about Bronze Age metalwork focusing of stylistic features to create typo-chronological classifications, used to identify trends and the productions of different workshops. However, this traditional approach suffers from a major theoretical flaw. It is not clear who, the craftsmen or the users or both, is involved in the decision process leading to the choice of certain shapes or ornaments. On the other hand, production techniques are the result of choices made by the craftsmen alone. As these technological choices reflect craftsmen’s habitus and depend on their socio-cultural background, their variations in space enable the identification of different production groups and the monitoring of their evolution in time. To do so, techno-typology seems to be the right tool. This classification system is purely based on the variations observed at different steps of the chaîne opératoire, giving us a proxy to access craftsmen’s identities otherwise invisible through the archaeological record. If such classifications are now common in the study of ceramic and lithic productions, it remains scarce in studies dealing with Bronze Age metalwork. In the framework of our dissertation, we were able to build a typo-technological classification of Bronze Age solid-hilted swords based on the results of X-ray imaging techniques. We will present the main results of our research concerning the identification and evolution of production groups involved in the making of these weapons.
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Dates et versions

hal-04192681 , version 1 (31-08-2023)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04192681 , version 1

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Léonard Dumont. Techno-typology: a tool for understanding Bronze Age metalworkers’ identities and organisations. EAA 2023 Weaving Narratives, European Association of Archaeologists, Aug 2023, Belfast, United Kingdom. ⟨hal-04192681⟩
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