Early ironworking in Iron Age South India: New evidence for the social organization of production from northern Karnataka

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter G. Johansen
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
South India ◽  
The Social ◽  
Organization Of Production ◽  
New Evidence

86. The Social Organization of the Coorgs of South India

Man ◽  
1946 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 98
Author(s):  
M. N. Srinivas
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
South India ◽  
The Social

Tankards of the British Iron Age

2015 ◽  
Vol 81 ◽  
pp. 311-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan A. Horn
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Copper Alloy ◽  
Alloy Sheet ◽  
Manufacturing Processes ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Evidence

Iron Age tankards are stave-built wooden vessels completely covered or bound in copper-alloy sheet. The distinctive copper-alloy handles of these vessels frequently display intricate ‘Celtic’ or La Tène art styles. They are characterised by their often highly original designs, complex manufacturing processes, and variety of find contexts. No systematic analysis of this artefact class has been undertaken since Corcoran’s (1952a) original study was published in Volume 18 of these Proceedings. New evidence from the Portable Antiquities Scheme for England and Wales and recent excavations have more than quadrupled the number of known examples (139 currently). It is therefore necessary and timely to re-examine tankards, and to reintegrate them into current debates surrounding material culture in later prehistory. Tankards originate in the later Iron Age and their use continued throughout much of the Roman period. As such, their design was subject to varying influences over time, both social and aesthetic. Their often highly individual form and decoration is testament to this fact and has created challenges in developing a workable typology (Corcoran 1952a; 1952b; 1957; Spratling 1972; Jackson 1990). A full examination of the decoration, construction, wear and repair, dating, and deposition contexts will allow for a reassessment of the role of tankards within the social and cultural milieu of later prehistoric and early Roman Britain.

Political Economy of the Crisis in Post-Colonial Zimbabwe

2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Smart E. Otu
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Short Circuit ◽  
Basic Material ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Milieu ◽  
Organization Of Production

Conventional western social science scholars hold the view that the current crisis in Zimbabwe is but the consequence of misgovernance by President Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF led government. This paper debunks this viewpoint and considers it a short-circuit analysis of the complex nature of Zimbabwe’s crisis. Instead, the political economy approach is adopted which is considered more far-reaching, holistic, historic, dialectic, and more empirically-scientific-based. The critical analysis of the crisis reveals that the key to the current socio-economic and political impasse in Zimbabwe lies in the nature of the social organization of production and the class character of both colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwe’s social system which are strongly tied to the land issue. To this end, the paper confirms that Zimbabwe’s economy, polity and social relations are organized in a manner that many Zimbabweans are at the fringe of the social structure. The main argument of this paper is that social organization of production in Zimbabwe is such that does not guarantee ordinary Zimbabweans access to land to produce their basic material needs, and to participate in making decision about how this major means of production is organized for production, distribution and consumption. This paper concludes by noting that the way out of the current crisis in Zimbabwe lies in a radical overhauling of the feeble social organization of production while not undermining the importance of a congenial political milieu in Zimbabwe

Practical Cosmologies

Ethnologies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-92
Author(s):  
Götz Hoeppe
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
South India ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Western Science ◽  
Organizational Contexts ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The Social

For much of the 20thcentury, indigenous cosmologies, understood as the totalizing worldviews of delimited social groups, were one of ethnology’s central topics. In the last few decades, however, the concept of cosmology no longer sat well with many ethnologists’ wariness of identifying social wholes as analytic units and with accepting correspondences of social organization with orders of time, space, and color, among others. Recently, Allen Abramson and Martin Holbraad, in their 2014 bookFraming Cosmologies, called for a “second wind” of anthropologists’ attention to cosmologies, now including popular understandings of Western science. While endorsing this broadened attention to cosmology and the uses of analyst’s perspectives, I call for remaining attentive to the practical uses of cosmologies by the actors that ethnographers learn from. This entails attending to the social accountabilities and organizational contexts that constrain how people act. I seek to illustrate this by drawing on ethnographies of fishers in south India as well as of astrophysicists in Germany.

scholarly journals Rethinking the Social Complexity of Early Iron Age Nomads

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 155-179
Author(s):  
Erez Ben-Yosef
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Social Complexity ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Formation Processes ◽  
Southern Levant ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Extended Spectrum ◽  
The Social

Recent evidence from the Aravah Valley challenges the prevailing assumption that Bedouin ethnography and inferences from ancient Near Eastern archives can adequately compensate for the archaeological lacuna in the study of biblical-era nomads. The evidence indicates that nomadic social organization at the turn of the 1st millennium BCE could have been – and in at least one case was – far more complex than ever considered before. This paper discusses the implications of the now extended spectrum of possible interpretations of nomads to the archaeological discourse on early Iron Age state formation processes in the Southern Levant.

scholarly journals A Case for the One-offs: Improvisation and Innovation Within a Copper Age Potting Community

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 513-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila Kohring
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Copper Age ◽  
Pottery Production ◽  
Technological Systems ◽  
Technological Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Organization Of Production ◽  
Insight Into

Unique objects are often poorly integrated into discussions about the social organization of production or technological processes. Often they are frustratingly interpreted as ritual or prestige objects, or they are simply consigned to footnotes in archaeological reports. This does not do them justice and their contextualization may provide greater insight into the social factors involved in production activities. This paper attempts to demonstrate what unique, or one-off, objects can tell us about technological systems and how improvisational technical choices can lead to innovation within society. It focuses on a particular example of pottery production and usage at the Copper Age site of San Blas (Spain) and how two particular vessels on the surface appear to be unique one-off products. This paper shows that one-off objects may in fact be opening the door to innovation through acts of improvisation within existing socially sanctioned production aesthetics and object ideals.

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