Biography of artefacts

Possession! This ambiguous word, capturing at the same time our material belongings, our dominion over them, and the inverted power they exercise over us.
[...] The nature of the object is an essential part of how it may be owned and possessed, and thus used and parted from, and its specific material qualities are essential parts of the object’s nature. There are several things to indicate that perceptions appreciating life histories and individual qualities, and literally or
metaphorically perceiving objects as animated, were present in a
Viking-Age Scandinavian context, and I will here give a few examples
to sustain this suggestion. The idea of animated objects may be reflected
in the ornamentation of the many Viking-Age artefacts which
are shaped like animals or human masks (Androshchuk 2014:202;
cf. Pearce 2013). Another example is the type name ‘knarr’ (cf. OE
cnearr), used for a category of Viking ships, which refers to the sound
created by the moving ship due to its particular construction (Svenska
Akademiens Ordbok, entry ‘knorr’). The idea of animated objects also
results through three types of textual sources: the personal names of
objects, referred to in the sagas and medieval poetry, the way some of
these objects are described as behaving, and statements attributed to
or inscribed on certain artefacts themselves [...]. Judging from Old Norse mythology and poetry, there are specific ideas behind what could, and should, be named: natural but culturally apprehended features like rivers, lakes and hills; culturally defined spaces like dwelling places and regions; domesticated animals, in mythology particularly if they have special functions or capacities; and certain types of objects. These are objects which are involved in special relations with
humans and gods, often functioning as personal attributes, in the manner of Odin’s spear Gungnir or Freyr’s ship Skíðblaðnir. Named objects are objects with certain qualities that make them appear as animated or purposeful [...]
Things of Quality may be possessed or even owned, but it is
characteristic that they at heart belong to a larger context than the single individual. They belong to a social play of gender roles, display and prestige, bond-binding and transcendental communication. Their beauty, value and special moments oblige us to treat them well and to pass them on. Things of Quality are admirable and desirable because of their capacities: force-resistant, swift, magical, beautiful, valuable. Yet they tend to remain just out of our reach or, if we should get hold of them, they cannot be trusted to stay and obey. Unrequited desire creates the feeling of unquiet and restless want that we call ‘to be
possessed’ and therefore they ultimately may own us as much as we may ever own them. Since only humans have feelings, our feelings for Things are not likely to ever be returned and entirely satisfied, no more than was Gollum’s yearning for his Precious ring.

The crossbow brooch is one of the most iconographic Late Roman objects. The golden and silver specimens of this brooch type are highly valued for their splendour and their often outstanding decorative techniques. Their inclusion in depictions of important historical figures and on monuments from Late Antiquity only adds to their reputation as elite Roman symbols. The full story of the crossbow brooch is much more complex, however. What started out as a simple copper-alloy-based functional object became one of the most compelling symbols of Roman power. These objects were found in every province throughout the Roman empire between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD. Despite its prominent place in iconography, there are no known antique textual sources that discuss the significance of this artefact, its owners or the reason for its importance.
This paper seeks to contribute to the debate on the social and historical contexts of the crossbow brooch by applying a cultural biographical approach to an object-based material culture study. The purpose is to track the changing series of meanings attributed to this artefact type by incorporating archaeological, historical and art historical evidence into anthropologically attested models that consider how complex social structures are reflected in objects.

In this work we highlight the existence of a long lasting tradition of ditched enclosures in Southwestern Iberia during the 4th and 3rd millennia BC. Actually, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula, countless ditched enclosures (recintos de fosos) were built.

Despite their abundance and the huge size of some of them -over 100 ha in certain cases-, references to Iberian recintos de fosos have been scarce, partial or inaccurate in international meetings and collective works on the matter. This state of affairs can be explained in part by the traditional tendency of both Portuguese and Spanish archaeologists to isolate themselves from the surrounding European academia. Methods and techniques that had been proved to be successful in other parts of Europe were not applied until recently; e.g. aerial photographs, geophysical surveys, extensive excavations, etc.

One of the ideas we defend is that Iberian recintos de fosos must be understood in an European context, especially Neolithic causewayed enclosures. It all contrasts with traditional approaches to the problem in Iberian Archaeology, but we think is very state-of-the-art when considered in a broader academic environment. We also found that formation processes of the archaeological record were a crucial aspect of the problem which had gone partly unnoticed.

The results of our research have been very fruitful, getting a lot of attention in Portuguese and Spanish academic circles lately.

Zusammenfassung – Bandkeramische Brunnen sind mit den teilweise hervorragenden Erhaltungsbedingungen für organische Funde eine herausragende Befundkategorie. Rezente Diskussionen fokussieren auf die Frage, ob die Brunnen Kultanlagen sind oder profane Infrastruktur. Mit einem Überblick der bislang veröffentlichten Befunde und einigen Interpretationsansätze wird versucht Klarheit über die Bedeutung der Brunnen innerhalb der frühneolithischen Siedlungslandschaft zu bekommen. Eine abschließende Antwort auf die Frage nach ‚sakral’ oder ‚profan’ ist nicht zu geben und wahrscheinlich auch nicht sinnvoll. Wichtiger sind in Zukunft Untersuchungen zu Bau, Gebrauch und Auflassung, die Einsicht geben in die soziale Organisation und den Umgang mit materieller Kultur während der Bandkeramik.

Abstract – Wells dating to the Linear Pottery Culture with good organic preservation constitute an extraordinary category of finds. Recent discussion has mainly focussed on the question if these wells are ritual complexes or profane infrastructure. By giving an overview of the published finds and posing some ideas about their function, an attempt is made to get more insight into the role the wells play within the Early Neolithic settlements. A definite interpretation is not possible at the moment and there probably will never be just a single answer. In future investigations it will be more important to look at the details of construction, use and abandonment, which give insight into social organization and the use of material culture during the Bandkeramik.

cosmology and intentionality -we put the head back onto the body, so to speak. We also scrutinize the premises for earlier interpretations of the objects' 'life stories' and reinterpret their trajectories. This influences the understanding of the act of hoarding, and finally leads to a discussion of how hoarding was also somehow related to the 'birth' of the artefacts.

A rare Chalcolithic rolled-gold bead-like ornament dated to c. 2400–2200 cal. BC was found in association with sherds of early Beaker ware in an Early Bronze Age Collared Urn burial dated
to c. 1545–1450 cal. BC. The grave was located at Pendleton, Lancashire. This paper reports on the AMS radiocarbon dates for the burial context along with X-ray composition analysis of the
gold ornament, which shows the object had a high platinum content consistent with alluvial, placer, deposits possibly originating in Brittany, France rather than the British Isles. This
unparalleled rolled-gold ornament is compared to the corpus of British and French rolled-gold ornaments and contemporary goldwork and a provenance, manufacture and biography of the find is explored. Both curation and fragmentation are considered in the context of a dated Beaker ware assemblage from the local domestic site of Lower Brockholes, Preston, as well as existing corpora of Beaker and Collared Urn ware from the region.

This paper considers the functionality and biographies of artifacts in the context of historical archaeology. It is argued that in order to understand how human life in the recent past unfolded in relation with material culture, artifacts must be recognized to perform various unobvious functions and also be conceived as processes rather than bounded physical objects. The paper begins with a theoretical discussion and then focuses on the post-acquisition life of artifacts and humanartifact relations in the seventeenth-century town of Tornio, northern Finland.

"In the desert of Iraq, in the al-Qadisiyah province, close to the small village of Afak and the once mighty religious center of Mesopotamia Nippur, lay a small site, known locally as Drehem, three mounds all in all, deserted and full of holes. Once under the shelter of the god Dagan, once a huge administrative complex that held the lives and heard the voices of hundreds, bureaucrats and craftsmen, soldiers and guards, dogs and sheep, priests and priestesses, kings and queens, cooks and butchers, poor and wealthy. Until one day in 2026 BCE, a couple of years after Ibbi-Sin had ascended to the throne, it was abandoned. It lay hidden for many years; a hidden gem decorating the desert. Until it was found almost 3900 years later. By poor and rich, by villagers and collectors. And since then, the once mighty Puzrish-Dagan has been skimmed. Holes in the hundreds have been dug penetrating the rooms where once scribes and bureaucrats roamed.

Thousands of tablets have been taken away, separated from each other and flooded antiquities markets from Europe to Asia, from Australia to America. Within these thousands of objects, a small unimportant tablet written by a scribe in the winter of 2042 BCE and a round tag, beautifully written and sealed with the seal of the director of the livestock agency that operated at Puzrish-Dagan sometime in the spring of 2042 BCE. Homeless they wandered, from Iraq to Paris, from Paris to St Petersburg, from Iraq to New York, from New York to Chicago.

After millennia of oblivion and years of travelling, both tablet and tag have found a new home. Far away from each other, with an ocean and a continent between them, these two that were so close together for more than 4000 years, in the soils of what is now Iraq, deep down in the marshlands that once were, are back together. In a virtual space that is, on the Internet and the online webpages of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative project. Both have now acquired different names, or better to say IDs; the tablet now known as P124003, the tag as P212288. Their home now is the virtual world; they are everywhere and every time. Their lives and travels interwoven with poverty, chaos, fear, and pain, wealth, order, excitement, and scholarship. This is their biography."

In recent years British Iron Age studies have focused on regionality whilst critiquing the hierarchical model of Iron Age society. Despite the success of these approaches there has been little detailed replacement of previous social models with an understanding of how Iron Age societies worked. Looking at the later Iron Age of western Britain this paper combines examination of the exchange of material culture alongside study of the landscape to explore the nature of Iron Age communities. It is argued that Iron Age societies in the region used material culture to construct and maintain social relationships, while using visual landscape references allowed groups to engage in larger perceived communities.

An old and previously unknown photograph allows us to rediscover a missing bronze spearhead found in the
late nineteenth century on a site dubbed “Castro Nemenzo”, a poetic name created by Eduardo Pondal for an
Iron Age hill fort located at an unspecified site somewhere in the northwestern tip of Galicia. Its dimensions and
form make this spearhead a scarce and interesting exemplar of weapons assignable to the beginning of the Late
Bronze Age in northwest Iberia and also makes clear its filiation with Atlantic metallurgy, probably a specific
British or Irish concept, spearheads with a rapier-shaped blade.

Abb. 1 Stab dolch aus Stolpe (Landesmuseum Schleswig-Holstein Inv.-Nr. KS 541) -===--Abb. 2 Zeichnung des Stabdolches aus Stolpe (Landesmuseum Schleswig-Holstein Inv.-Nr. KS 541) dienen. Beide theoretischen Herangehensweisen konzentieren sich auf das Objekt selbst, wie mit ihm umgegangen wurde und wie es Bedeutung erlangte."

The cultural history of artefacts is a rewarding field of enquiry for understanding the many different ways that certain objects have been seen and valued in the past by different people and for various reasons. In examining a particular monument, for example, it is possible to illustrate the ways that it becomes invested with meaning and cultural significance through the antiquarian networks it is caught up in. This article aims to examine how the subject-matter of the Meidias hydria (the hydria bears two distinct scenes: the lower scene, encircling the vase, showing Herakles and others in the garden of the Hesperides; and the larger scene above, covering the shoulder and presenting the abduction of the daughters of Leucippus by the Dioscuri; Castor and Pollux), enjoyed the approbation of scholars and so to trace how this was subsequently developed over a particular period of time. More specifically, it focuses on the history of the reception of a single vase: that is, on the early responses to the painted scenes and the shape of the hydria. My aim here is to consider these responses, and to present evidence to study them reflecting on how one of Hamilton’s most prized possessions was featured through text and pictures.

As in many parts of western Europe, the later prehistoric record in inland Iberia hardly ever displays apparent and unambiguous purposeful depositions providing information on past social practices. This paper discusses one such infrequent case: a bewildering Late Bronze Age ceramic assemblage (1450-1150 cal BC) found within Pit 23 in Pico Castro (Dueñas, Palencia, Spain). The deployment of a cultural biographical approach has shed new light on the circumstances surrounding the elaboration, use, breakage, and discard of this pottery set made up of both coarse-ware storage vessels and fine ware for serving food. Despite their potentially divergent early roles and meanings, these vessels eventually completed their lifespans through comparable complex, multi-phase trajectories. These involved their breakage, subsequent reuse or alteration of certain parts – burnt, weathered or worn sherds - their deliberate re-assembly – even including the mending of some formerly detached parts - and their final abandonment. An exhaustive examination of the traces remaining on these ceramics has allowed the tracing of some remarkable physical and also semantic transformations, which help us to infer prehistoric social interactions. Thus, the involvement of such vessels in a probable feasting social gathering and their eventual demise and discard mobilizing precepts akin to an animistic ontology are posited as plausible hypotheses fitting this deposit.

Sumario: La reaparición de una pequeña hacha de la Edad del Bronce nos permite reencontrarnos con la obra y la metodología de Luís Monteagudo, y elaborar una lectura tipológica de la pieza que va más allá de lo formal. Una tipología escasa y disonante en el NO, pero no así en el ámbito cultural argárico del Sureste, que apunta posibles influencias externas de origen mediterráneo (ca.1800-1500 BC). Hachas de tipo argárico que parecen relacionarse con un espacio metalúrgico diferenciado en torno a las Rías Baixas gallegas, tipológicamente diverso en un acusadamente homogéneo Noroeste hispánico. Un espacio marcadamente costero que coincide con un área de depósitos de estaño abundantes y de fácil acceso y que apunta una posible relación con la explotación y distribución del mismo, clave, además, en el momento de despegue de la metalurgia del bronce. Esa conexión con la cultura argárica abre el camino hacia el mediterráneo para el estaño gallego y, como ya Luís Monteagudo había propuesto, lo introduce en el debate sobre su presencia en el Mediterráneo oriental.
Abstract: The reappearance of a small Bronze Age axe allows us to reengage with Luís Monteagudo's work and methodology, and develop a typological reading of the piece that goes beyond the conventional. A limited and dissonant typology in the NO, but not as it the Argaric cultural sphere of the Southeast, points to possible external influences of Mediterranean origin (ca. 1800-1500 BC). Argaric axes that appear to be connected with a distinct metallurgical space around the Galician Rias Baixas, typologically diverse in a strikingly homogenous Iberian Northwest. A markedly coastal space that coincides with an area of easily accessible and abundant tin deposits, points to a possible relation with the extraction and distribution of the same, essential, besides, in the initiation of bronze metallurgy. This connection with the Argaric Culture paves the way towards the Mediterranean for the Galician tin and, as Luis Monteagudo had proposed, introduces it in the debate about its presence in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Early Neolithic well of Altscherbitz (see TEA 29) has surpassed all expectations. Found during construction work on the airport of Leipzig/Halle in the federal state of Saxony, Germany, the lower 3.5 meters of the complex, preserved under waterlogged conditions, were block-lifted and have been under excavation since the beginning of 2008. As the complex has been lifted together with the construction pit, all aspects of its construction, use and abandonment could be investigated. Although not completely finished yet, the excavation is in its final stages, so a first overview of the complete structure can now be given. Dug into glacial till, the construction pit possessed nearly vertical sides, was sub-circular in plan with a diameter of approx. 2.6 meters; only in the very lowest parts it was somewhat narrower and more quadratic in outline. The till itself can be regarded as an aquiclude, and although water saturated lenses and layers can be encountered locally according to Christian Tinapp, the geologist who has been working on the excavation, none of these were cut by the pit. The only phenomenon that can be regarded as some kind of aquifer are two very narrow bands of sand, some decimetres above the bottom from the well. This shows that it has produced only a very limited amount of water and certainly hasn't been the central supply of water for the whole settlement. The regular source was probably a small stream approx. 300 m to the southwest, the 'Kalter Born'.

A biographical approach to watercraft technologies in the Mesolithic of Denmark - A focus on a canoe and paddle found at the site of Tybrind Vig, Denmark, examining the ways in which it was created, used and discarded to understand the knowledge behind the artefact.

In this paper we discuss the research of the evidence of the Easternmost material expression of the Funnel Beaker Culture, namely a Megalith grave situated on the West side of Gotland Island in the Baltic sea. The people who built and used the megalith structure brought the Neolithic lifestyle to Gotland. The biography of this monument includes two excavations of which we participated in the latest investigation carried out in 1984. Our osteological analysis confirmed that c. 30 individuals of various ages and sex had been buried here and the structure of the monument is that of a Rectangular Dolmen. This paper discusses the discovery of this specific site, as well as exploring the existence of this type of monument in a Gotlandic context. Furthermore, is this really the only Megalith monument on Gotland or are more of these structures yet to be recognised? Finally one may ask if the Neolithic lifestyle really was successful on Gotland in the Neolithic times...?

The aim of this paper is to approach the importance of animals in human technology during the 3rd mille- nium BC. How important were animals as a source of raw material? Was there a careful selection of their bones? Did ancient beliefs and myths about some species have any influence on that?In order answer these and others questions we have analysed an assemblage of 599 osseous objects from three south-eastern Iberian sites: Los Millares, El Malagón and Los Castillejos.The discussion includes aspects such as the use of especial raw materials, labor investment, use-wear patterns, as well as curation and maintenance.Some of the objects included in this assemblage may have been considered as really valuable and even prestigious personal belongings.

presented at People and Things on the Move conference, Thursday, 2015 May 14 - Saturday, May 16, Neubauer Collegium, The Chicago University. http://neubauercollegium.uchicago.edu/events/uc/people_and_things/

This paper seeks to contribute to defining what an “imaginary museum” of the experience of exile might be. The choice of the term “exile” to define the major form of contemporary displacement is paradigmatic: it aims to decenter gazes and interpretations and to rethink its presentation through two principal parameters: the extension of the museographic perimeter and the establishment of relations, described here through different examples, material and fictional.

This paper considers the functionality and biographies of artifacts in the context of historical archaeology. It is argued that in order to understand how human life in the recent past unfolded in relation with material culture, artifacts must be recognized to perform various unobvious functions and also be conceived as processes rather than bounded physical objects. The paper begins with a theoretical discussion and then focuses on the post-acquisition life of artifacts and human-artifact relations in the seventeenth-century town of Tornio, northern Finland.

The Distant Worlds Journal (DWJ) is a peer-reviewed online journal that seeks to provide a platform for early-career researchers to present their findings and perspectives on cultures of the ancient world. It has its inspiration in the Munich Graduate School for Ancient Studies ‘Distant Worlds’, which currently incorporates Prehistorical Archaeology, Classical Archaeology and Philology, Byzantine Studies, Ancient History and Philosophy, Theology, Egyptology, Biblical Studies, Near Eastern Archaeology, Assyriology and Hittite Studies, Indology, Tibetology, and Sinology. The aspiration of Distant Worlds is to draw together scholars from a variety of disciplines and to engage in interdisciplinary discussion regarding broader questions surrounding the study of the ancient world. In this manner, the DWJ aims to cultivate a forum with which to engage the wider scholarly community.

Are extraterrestrials, cosmonauts, or astronauts from another space civilization one day around the Earth? Thinking beings, of another planet, of another solar and very technically evolved, they have already begun, during the history of the Earth, a program of space prospection which will improve until us? No conquerors, until proven otherwise, we are not enslaved outside our planet, but as visitors, even initiators?
Clearly, there was an intervention of beings from elsewhere in our past, a spacecraft in space with a landings of travelers before the amazed eyes of people of the era man - primitive of the prehistory, societies of antiquity, populace of the Middle Ages, people of the Renaissance - who then took for gods, demons or strangers, descended from the sky?
This is, in essence, the paramount question to which the theory of ancient astronauts (TAA), born at the end of the Second World War and at the edge of space space, seeks answer. In spite of this apparent simplicity, some seem to him convoluted parents who deserve curiosity, if not great interest.

This contribution emerged from an open, and continuing, discussion between a chemist and a philosopher, which resulted in a common awareness of the importance of trusting objects. The purpose of this biography of a molecular object - cyclodextrin - is both descriptive and normative. Descriptive: to understand how a thing can become an object of trust or/and distrust. The biography reveals three layers of valuation sustaining the process of generating trust: reputation, semiosis, and ontology. The first one acts at the level of actors' strategies and their interplay with regulations, the second operates with value-laden images conditioning the actors' expectations, and the last concerns the changing relationships between CD-technology and nature. As to the normative purpose, we aim at evaluating these valuations in order to allow critical trust generation. Finally, we try to appraise how nanotechnology reconfigures trust in objects by bringing visibility to the valuations.

Quite recently a new Alsengem was discovered in the province of Drenthe. Alsengems are small button-like discs made of two layers of glass (the bottom one black and the top one blue) that feature engraving usually consisting of one, two, three or rarely four stick-figures. When Gandert first published the corpus in 1955, 84 gems were known. That number has increased considerably in recent years. Today we know a total of 132. Some of these gems have emerged via archeological discovery. Another group was used on liturgical objects such as book covers, crucifixes, and reliquaries. Now as in 1955, the liturgical group is slightly larger. Distribution of the two groups is very different. In the Netherlands, the archaeological Alsengems are known from the northern provinces (fig. 4). Most of them are from Friesland (18 pieces). Four specimens have been found in Drenthe. Most of the other archaeological finds have been made in northern Germany, Denmark and Sweden. The liturgical Alsengems are mainly known from central Germany and the area south of there. The two diffusion regions barely overlap (fig. 7). On the Alsengems one to four standing stick-figures are normally shown. The gems with three figures have been interpreted as the three Magi as initially proposed by Schulze-Dörrlamm. According to that theory the gems would have been brought home by pilgrims returning from Cologne, where production would have taken place. Dating of the Alsengems (11th-14th centuries) has so far been based largely on art historical interpretation of the liturgical gems. In recent years, some gems have emerged from well-dated archaeological contexts in northern Germany, Denmark and Sweden, indicating dates in the 12th and 13th centuries. There are clear indications that the Alsengems were used as amulets in rings and metal mounts. Distribution of the archaeological gems does not match that of the lead-tin insignia carried by Cologne pilgrims in the 14th and 15th centuries (fig. 15). It is therefore implausible that the Alsengems were pilgrim badges from Cologne. The iconography of the gems connects much better with the visual language of the peoples of Northern Europe. Parallels for the Alsengems figures are particularly numerous in the gold B-bracteates from the 5th and 6th century and the picture stones from the Viking Age. It therefore seems likely that these figures represent not the three kings, but rather the northern gods. In then Christian Central Europe, there was apparently no reluctance to apply such non-Christian imagery to liturgical objects. The same is true for similar gems from the Roman period (fig. 18).
The Alsengemmen, in my view, were not pilgrim badges from Cologne, but products of the northern world. They were worn as amulets in the 12th and 13th centuries. The concentration of archaeological gems found in Friesland does not necessarily mean that the gems were produced there. Exploitation of the Frisian terpen – artificially raised occupation mounds – in the 19th and early 20th century produced a disproportionate number of discoveries from that area. We cannot even exclude the possibility that the four Alsengems found in Drenthe derive from the transferred fertile soil from those Frisian mounds.

НАРОДНИ МУЗЕЈ БЕОГРАД MUSÉE NATIONAL DE BELGRADE 2017 оригиналан научни рад ЗБОРНИК НАРОДНОГ МУЗЕЈА XXIII-1/2017 Археологија УДК 903.23"6343"(497.11) Примљено: 3. март 2017. Прихваћено: 22. мај 2017. 123-133 Јасна Б. ВУКОВИЋ Универзитет у Београду, Филозофски факултет -Одељење за археологију ПОПРАВКЕ И ПРОДУЖЕНА УПОТРЕБА КЕРАМИЧКИХ ПОСУДА: ПРИМЕР РАНОНЕОЛИТСКЕ ЗДЕЛЕ С КОВАЧКИХ ЊИВА * Апстракт: У раду је приказана здела чије је дно, пошто је поломљено током употребе, заравњено, чиме је продужен њен употребни век. Размотрен је изглед очуваних абразивних трагова и реконструисана је активност током које су настали. Претпостављено је да је здела поправљена услед недостатка нових посуда, што је последица сезонске израде керамике, типичне за неспецијализовану производњу. Кључне речи: здела, абразија, поправка, продужен употребни век, Ковачке њиве, рани неолит * Овај чланак је резултат рада на пројекту Археологија Србије: културни идентитет, интеграциони фактори, технолошки процеси и улога централног Балкана у развоју европске праисторије (177020), који финансира Министарство просвете, науке и технолошког развоја Републике Србије.

Users invent new products and product categories, but the assumption has been that manufacturers will supplant users if their innovation is of value to many. The current paper examines Russian all-terrain vehicles “karakats” to discuss a case of an era of extended user dominated technology and the related dynamics of dispersed peer innovation. Karakat users have invented, modified, diversified and iterated this technology, as well as continued to self-build and self-maintain it. These vehicles are wide spread, have half a century of history and hundreds of design variants. Despite this, manufacturers have captured only a small subsection of the karakat market, albeit they have established new markets based on karakat principles. We find that the combinatory effect of previously known dynamics in user innovation research and science and technology studies offers a plausible explanation for the user dominance and dispersed peer innovation pattern, and manufacturers’ failure to conquer the market.

Throughout northern Europe, thousands of burial mounds were erected in the third millennium BCE. Starting in the Corded Ware culture, individual people were being buried underneath these mounds, often equipped with an almost rigid set of grave goods. This practice continued in the second half of the third millennium BCE with the start of the Bell Beaker phenomenon. In large parts of Europe, a ‘typical’ set of objects was placed in graves, known as the ‘Bell Beaker package’.


This book focusses on the significance and meaning of these Late Neolithic graves. Why were people buried in a seemingly standardized manner, what did this signify and what does this reveal about these individuals, their role in society, their cultural identity and the people that buried them?


By performing in-depth analyses of all the individual grave goods from Dutch graves, which includes use-wear analysis and experiments, the biography of grave goods is explored. How were they made, used and discarded? Subsequently the nature of these graves themselves are explored as contexts of deposition, and how these are part of a much wider ‘sacrificial landscape’.


A novel and comprehensive interpretation is presented that shows how the objects from graves were connected with travel, drinking ceremonies and maintaining long-distance relationships.


Printed book available at: https://www.sidestone.com/books/stereotype

In terms of individual artefacts, the Tazza Farnese (Museo Nazionale di Napoli) does not have the wide and popular recognition that the Euphronios Krater or the Portland Vase, for instance, have today. This lack of interest may explain ‘why no story of its adventures has been written, and why this extraordinary object, so prized by its illustrious owners for 2,000 years, has become a historical footnote’ (p. 225). Being concerned more with ‘a sense of wonder and greed’ that the Tazza ‘incited to all those who were able to own it’ (p. 6) and less with a reference to its artistic reception throughout the ages, this volume is a cultural history of a banded curved agate bowl, probably made in the first century B.C. in Ptolemaic Egypt. It presents a wealth of ideas and perspectives for reconstructing the locations the Tazza inhabited, the significance it held and, in line with much ‘circumstantial’ historical information, the characters that gave it meaning. Applied to a variety of socio-cultural and historical contexts, these insights provide a context for a new reading of the story. Amongst these ‘contexts’, reception and biography have already become two of the key constructs in contemporary scholarship.

The iconography of Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805) includes several portraits, but most of them have attribution problems. The subject of this paper is the portrait of a young man wearing the big black neck-bow, with handwritten musical notes in his left hand (private collection). It surfaced in 1991 as a portrait of W-A Mozart, but since then it has been diligently researched, and it was suggested that it had been painted by Jean-Etienne Liotard and depicted Luigi Boccherini. It seems that the main reason for this suggestion was the fact that the big black neck-bow which adorns the unknown young man is almost identical to one depicted in the portrait of Boccherini in the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne).
The images of the portrait soon began to spread around with this attribution and without the question mark. But, despite this fact, the names of both the sitter and the artist and the suggested date of the creation of the portrait (1768) are still questionable. Our deepest doubts in the recognition of the model as Boccherini are caused by the fact that in the portrait of the allegedly famous cellist his musical instrument is not depicted.  The identification of sitters should be based first of all on the details which, according to the artistic tradition of the era, pointed at the personality of the model. Such details are the depicted musical notes which we were able to decipher. As a result, they brought us to the first and main conclusion: the portrait does not represent Luigi Boccherini. Also, a circle is delineated, in which further exploration and research should be undertaken.

Résumé de mémoire  "De l'objet de patrimoine à l'objet archéologique: étude des artefacts "vikings" conservés au musée d'Aquitaine de Bordeaux" sous la direction d'Isabelle Cartron, soutenu le 27 juin 2012 à l'université Bordeaux Montaigne.

El documento es una autobiografía descriptiva paradigmático-unidimensional aperiódica.  Es unidimensional, por cuanto el autor presenta su propia historia de vida en torno a un unico componente:  el conjunto de indicadores de su actuar público-intelectual 1968-2018 en apoyo a la lucha por el cambio estructural mexicano y mundial.    Es paradigmática, porque NO hay una narración propiamente dicha, sino que la autobiografía se esboza a partir de listados de su obra, agrupados conforme a la motivación de la creación de cada elemento compoonente y al uso que se le dió en tanto sustento de la lid por la transformación cualitativa de la sociedad. Resulta aperiódica debido a que  NO hay una periodización  y ni siquiera una cronología de lo presentado.  Y es descriptiva porque sólo se presenta la “ficha bibliográfica” de cada obra, en la vasta mauyoría de los casos con su “link” al text completo de la mísma: hay ausencia total de elementos interpretativos de los factores contingenciales y vivenciales de la realización de tal o cual estudio y de la publicación de los resultados obtenidos. El lector queda, así, en libertad absoluta de reagrupar todo o partes de los listados, de acuerdo a cualquier otra o misma caterogización.  Asimismo, tiene la posiblidad de enriquecer y criticar el documento que se presenta aquí, comp producto del abordaje de los niveles de conocimiento interpretativo, predicitivo y aun evalualativo.
                                        -o-

This document is a descriptive, paradigmatic, unidimensional, non periodical autobiography. It is unimensional, in the sense that the author presents his own life story, in terms of a unique component:  the set of indicators of his 1968-2018 public, intelectual support of the Mexican and worldwide structural change.  It is paradigmatic due to the fact that there is no narrative, as such.  Instead, the autobiography is outlined, based on listings of Gamboa's works, grouped according to reasons for the creation of each composing element and to its use in terms of support to the strife for society's qualitative transformation. Non periodicity is due to the fact that there is no periodization whatsoever; not even a chronology is presented.  And it is descriptive because it only presents the “bibliiography card” of each work, containing links to free  full text in the vast majority of cases. There is absolute absence of explanation elements of contingency and life factors for realization of this or that study and for the publication of results obtained.  The reader, therefore, is free to recathegorize all or parts of listings provided, in accogdance to any other cathegorization or grouping list.  It is also possible to enrichen and criticize the document hereby presented, as a result of working in the interpretative, predictive or even assessment knowledge levels.

In health research and services, and in many other domains, we note the emergence of large-scale information systems intended for long-term use with multiple users and uses. These e-infrastructures are becoming more widespread and pervasive and, by enabling effective sharing of information and coordination of activities between diverse, dispersed groups, are expected to transform knowledge-based work. Social scientists have sought to analyse the significance of these systems and the processes by which they are created. Much current attention has been drawn to the often-problematic experience of those attempting to establish them. By contrast, this paper is inspired by concerns about the theoretical and methodological weakness of many studies of technology and work organisation -particularly the dominance of relatively short-term, often single site studies of technology implementation. These weaknesses are particularly acute in relation to the analysis of infrastructural technologies. We explore the relevance to such analysis of recent developments in what we call the Biography of Artefacts (BoA) perspectivewhich emphasises the value of strategic ethnography : theoretically-informed, multi-site and longitudinal studies:. We seek to draw insights here from a programme of empirical research into the long-term evolution of corporate e-infrastructures (reflected in current Enterprise Resource Planning systems) and review some new conceptual tools arising from recent research into e-Infrastructures (e-Is). These are particularly relevant to e-Infrastructures: How do we know and understand them? 2 understanding the current and ongoing difficulties encountered in attempts to develop large-scale Health Infrastructures.

Metal hoards with broken artefacts have for a long time been regarded as scrap metal hoards, which means that a smith has hidden away bronze with the intention to unearth it later and make new items from it. This idea is probably wrong and other explanations are needed. The aim of this paper is to study metalwork from the Late Bronze Age, with special emphasis on social identity and symbolism. The starting point in my discussions will be a metal hoard from Härnevi parish in Uppland. The material will be investigated in relation to a social and symbolic perspective. By studying the items I wish to contribute to a better understanding of the underlying thoughts that resulted in the deposition of the metal hoard from Härnevi.

This paper also gives an opportunity to investigate the possibility of analysing artefacts from the Late Bronze Age in a gender perspective, which will also provide a framework for the hoard's disparate object composition. So far gender studies of metal hoards have focused on investigating the number of female and male items in metal depositions. This is a heteronormative understanding of gender, limited to the genitals, and can be described as the social and cultural apprehension of the biological difference between men and women. Instead I want to examine the possibility to consider artefacts from the Bronze Age as belonging to persons with different social and religious identities in society, which is rather a non-normative gender.

Key words: Härnevi, metal hoard, bronze metalwork, Late Bronze Age, object biographies, gender, symbolism

In the desert of Iraq, in the al-Qadisiyah province, close to the small village of Afak and the once mighty religious center of Mesopotamia Nippur, lay a small site, known locally as Drehem, three mounds all in all, deserted and full of holes. Once under the shelter of the god Dagan, once a huge administrative complex that held the lives and heard the voices of hundreds, bureaucrats and craftsmen, soldiers and guards, dogs and sheep, priests and priestesses, kings and queens, cooks and butchers, poor and wealthy. Until one day in 2026 BCE, a couple of years after Ibbi-Sin had ascended to the throne, it was abandoned. It lay hidden for many years; a hidden gem decorating the desert. Until it was found almost 3900 years later. By poor and rich, by villagers and collectors. And since then, the once mighty Puzrish-Dagan has been skimmed. Holes in the hundreds have been dug penetrating the rooms where once scribes and bureaucrats roamed. Thousands of tablets have been taken away, separated from each other and flooded antiquities markets from Europe to Asia, from Australia to America. Within these thousands of objects, a small unimportant tablet written by a scribe in the winter of 2042 BCE and a round tag, beautifully written and sealed with the seal of the director of the livestock agency that operated at Puzrish-Dagan sometime in the spring of 2042 BCE.

cas sont abordés ici, notamment la conservation à long terme de ces objets, leur destruction immédiate et leur abandon à la désintégration. Le choix de la stratégie qui va être suivie par les survivants est influencé par divers facteurs, parmi lesquels la valeur pragmatique et sentimentale accordée à l'objet et l'état émotionnel du moment. Toutefois, le facteur décisif va être le type de souvenir que le survivant cherche à conserver de la relation qu'il entretenait avec le défunt. Le soin apporté à l'objet correspond au désir de conserver un souvenir cher, alors que sa destruction vise à expurger une mémoire douloureuse. La vitesse à laquelle un souvenir est détruit reflète le degré auquel on aspire à oublier et à aller de l'avant. Ces attitudes reflètent explicitement le fait que des objets peuvent évoquer les souvenirs de relations passées et il est utile d'aborder chaque stratégie comme une forme de gestion de la mémoire. M- : mémoire, mémentos, souvenirs, rituel mortuaire, deuil, culture matérielle.

Since the influential work of Roger White (1988; 1990), there have been a range of studies exploring the reuse and recycling of artefacts in southern and eastern Britain in the 5th–7th centuries AD, focusing especially on the reuse of Roman artefacts in early Anglo-Saxon furnished inhumation graves. This chapter will reappraise the theoretical and methodological framework for such studies, suggesting that the focus on ‘Roman’ artefacts distracts attention away from the potential mnemonic significance of deploying early medieval curated artefacts in the mortuary arena as key components of burial assemblages. We propose a new approach to early medieval artefacts, focusing on how older early medieval ‘heirlooms’ were deployed within the burial tableau as significant elements of mortuary performance. This argument is illustrated by four furnished inhumation graves, two each from a pair of cemeteries in east Kent.

In the article 18 small bronze cauldrons without handles are presented. The distribution of this unusual type from the 12th to 18th centuries appears to be restricted to the Northern Netherlands. Some of the cauldrons still show traces of an iron band around the neck. Some others are clearly unfinished products: the presence of a casting blob, casting seam and the clearly visible chaplets or spacers all indicate an unusual degree of negligence of the founder. It is argued that the small cauldrons were deposited as offerings on the occasion of a foundation or abandonment of a farm. Find circumstances do not contradict this interpretation. If the cauldrons were not meant to be used for cooking, the customer could ask the bronze founder for a small earless, not well finished cauldron and negotiate for a reduction in price.

This paper deals with the bronze statuette of a Genius discovered near a temple in the
Forum of the Roman city of Grumentum. Bronze statuettes in context are quite rare: therefore, issues concerning its inclusion in the archaeological record, its relationship with the nearby sacred building and its dating are analyzed, as well as its economic, personal and symbolic value. In so doing, I raise several methodological questions and reflect on how these objects have been studied so far and how their informative potential could better be exploited by considering them from different points of view.

Colloque international : LES RÉPARATIONS DE LA PRÉHISTOIRE À NOS JOURS : CULTURES TECHNIQUES ET SAVOIR-FAIRE TECHNICAL CULTURES OF REPAIR, FROM PREHISTORY TO THE PRESENT DAY MERCREDI 26 JUIN

Résumé : Les biens précieux occupent une place importante dans l’espace social des élites du haut Moyen Âge. Leur conservation – dans le but de thésauriser, accumuler ou même redistribuer – est une préoccupation névralgique. Je propose d’approcher l’acte de la réparation des objets de parure grâce à l’observation archéologique d’artefacts qui me permettront d’envisager l’écart entre objet endommagé et objet réparé, en soulignant l’étendue des manipulations qui varient d’un objet à l’autre. Si la question de la valeur de ces biens ne se pose plus, elle mérite pourtant d’être explorée une nouvelle fois au prisme de cet instant particulier de la vie des objets. En envisageant le parcours de l’artefact, il est possible d’éclairer les motivations qui ont conduit les propriétaires à réparer, ou au contraire à conserver, voire mettre en valeur ses fractures. Ce faisant, j’aborderai les aspects techniques de la réparation, les ressources mobilisées, mais aussi son retour dans la sphère intime des propriétaires.