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Book Reviews Due Today!. If you are here before 10:00 am, you may place your Book Review in the appropriate pile at the front of the lecture hall. If you are late, you will need to wait until the break or the end of class to do the same. Unit 7 Quiz. Must be completed by midnight tonight.
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Book Reviews Due Today! If you are here before 10:00 am, you may place your Book Review in the appropriate pile at the front of the lecture hall. If you are late, you will need to wait until the break or the end of class to do the same.
Unit 7 Quiz Must be completed by midnight tonight.
Unit 8 The Archaeology of Ideology, Ritual, and Symbolism
Individual Needs: To explain how world works For sense of control in face of crisis To cope with death and fate of human psyche Societal Needs: To create consensus about right and wrong To validate transitions in personal and communal life To legitimize social institutions Humans face common problems that require rationalization:
structures of the mind culturally-constructed; shared and learned in social contextsinfluence how we perceive and act in the material world of our experience • Ideology: broad set of rationalizations for common human problems and experiences. • Religion: ideology that deals with understanding the relationship between humans and the supernatural.
Material Aspects of Ideology: • Ritual: stereotyped behavior that enacts some aspect of ideology • Symbols: arbitrary, abstract signs that carry or create meaning in a particular context • Buildings, Features, Public Spaces • Objects • Artistic Representations (Iconography)
Processualist/Functionalist Approaches • Focus on FUNCTION of ideology in organization and regulation of society • Seen as evolutionarily “adaptive”--solves some organizational problem and contributes to survival • Regulates human-human or human-environment interactions by appealing to morally correct behavior Emile Durkeim (1915) Sacred: forbidden, unquestioned, holy Profane: everyday, ordinary
Example: Origins of Katchina Religion in SW • 14th c. evidence for new ritual practices: kivas murals, rock art, plazas, glaze ware bowls • Interpreted as “social glue” that held large aggregated pueblos together • Calendrical rituals: triggered certain actions at certain times; especially agricultural activities
FIVE MINUTE BREAK If you can’t possibly stay to the end of the lecture, then place your Book Review in the appropriate box on the stage at the front of the lecture hall.
Post-Processual/Structuralist Approaches • Ideology reflects system of cognitive STRUCTURES • Structures imprinted on material world--repetition, patterning. • Relationship between this system of cognitive structures (“worldview”) and experience in material world is recursive, reflexive. • Archaeologist need to study the role that ideology plays in structuring the social and material world.
Example: James Deetz (1977)In Small Things Forgotten Argument:between 1607 and 1760 English colonists experienced major transformation in how they conceived, ordered and lived in the world. This change left distinct imprint on their material world. Examples: Ceramics, Domestic Architecture
17th-early 18th c. Medieval Mindset Group oriented, corporate, organic, vernacular Mid 18th c. Georgian Order Focus on individual, formal, orderly, more academic, popular Anglo-American Worldview • Result of expansion of merchantile capitalism • Rise of literate, secular, middle class • Artificial means to impose balance and order on increasingly uncertain material world
Marxist or Post-Structuralist Critique • Mark Leone (1980s) Historic Anapolis, MD • Critiqued structuralists for not taking into account issues of POWER AND AGENCY • Internal contradictions: Rich/Poor; Free/Slave; British/American • Threat to economic and political stability of new American middle class
William Paca’s Garden, Anapolis • Ostentatious displays of Power and Wealth • Symmetry and Order demonstrate control over nature Ordering Nature = Naturalizing Order Discursive acts designed to stabilize and assert individual prosperity and power--not just a material reflection of it.