This volume is first shown to form part of a larger dialogue arising from some critiques of the dominant models in archaeological theory. In particular, it is part of an attempt to credit people and society in prehistory and material culture studies with the same abilities as we credit ourselves, rather than reducing them to the passive recipients of external forces. Two general discussions then follow, a summary is given of some approaches to the concept of power, and in particular a description and critique of Foucault's recent work on this topic is used as the basis for developing a working model of power. A model for the critique of ideology is developed through the examination of three examples. Firstly Marx's critique of the bourgeois conception of the political economy, secondly Marx's own labour theory of value, and thirdly the implications of three recent critiques of Marx's work. From these are derived some general characteristics of a working model for the critique of ideology, which differs in a number of respects from the original example of Marx's writings.

A problem in archaeology has always been that its method has provided the dominant metaphor for its interpretation. Before all else, archaeology has been about discovery. It is as quest and search that archaeology first commanded and now continues to fascinate its wide audience. This is encapsulated in the image of the archaeologist finally clearing a way through the last of the jungle to reveal the ancient ruined city, or burrowing through placid fields and orchards to uncover the unsuspected evidence of antiquity.

The process by which children come to accept the gender-specific associations of everyday objects are considered. The eight basic forms of the Endo ceramic assemblage are described, as used in everyday and in ceremonial contexts. The central role played by some pots in the wedding ceremonies reveal certain associations that may account for the pattern of decorative treatments of the assemblage. Pottery serves both to separate but also to mediate between the spheres of activity and interpretation represented by the two genders. This analysis is reinforced by a consideration of the use of broken pots and raw clay. The pottery forms can thus be related to the assimilation and ritual legitimation of the social order, and in particular, of male dominance. However, both the muted and practical power of women must be considered.

Introduction

The dominant theme of this book is to investigate the kinds of relationships which exist between ideology, representations of power and material culture. In this chapter these relationships will be illustrated by means of a specific case study concerned with the use of pottery by a predominantly agricultural group in Kenya. As will be demonstrated one of the main themes of this study is the suitability of the theoretical approaches advocated (outlined in Chapter 1) to a society divided not by social classes but in terms of sex and age, factors which while being presented in a specific social form, are nevertheless overtly given a biological justification.

This volume arises out of a symposium held at the third Theoretical Archaeology Group conference, Reading, U.K. in December 1981. Most of the papers are, however, either extensively revised or use quite different examples from the original presentations. All but one of the contributors to this volume also wrote papers for an earlier publication in this series, Symbolic and Structural Archaeology (Hodder, Ed. 1982). The ideas that form the focus of this volume were one of a number to be tentatively explored there.

A consideration of ideology and power means that we are no longer able simply to ‘read off’ the nature of past societies from material evidence. Instead the archaeological record must be understood as actively mediated and manipulated as part of the social strategies of the individuals and groups that constituted a past society. Material culture can be used to express interests and ideas which may very well be contradictory. In order to understand ideology and power successfully a historical, particularist and contextual approach to the evidence is fundamental. This allows us to tackle both the variability and the specificity of archaeological data and contemporary material culture. It makes the past irreducibly the creation of sentient social actors and allows us to come both to a better understanding of it and of ourselves.

We recognise that this is only one of a number of attempts, at present being conducted, which seek to reorientate the nature of archaeological theory and practice.

A summary of the main approaches to the study of megaliths reveals how recent processual work that relates them to general principles fails to deal with the specificity of their variability, and their particular historical context. A systematic comparison between central and western European megaliths and central European long-houses in the 5th and 4th millennia reveals eight points of similarity. It is suggested that the tombs represent a transformation of the houses. This may be understood in relation to a transformation in the productive base and social organisation of the period. The specific form of the houses is related to the marking out and naturalisation of the position of women, and the importance of lineages at a time when labour was the key factor in the productive system. When the scarcity of land becomes predominant over the scarcity of labour, the emphasis changes from the domestic context of the home to the mediating properties of the supernatural expressed in the tombs, for control over the lineage. The evidence for Central and Atlantic Europe is compared.

The history of research on the megalithic monuments of western Europe provides a clear illustration of the deleterious effects of the split between historical and processual approaches in archaeology. In this paper, some of these effects will be illustrated, but then, using essentially the same material, an alternative approach will be examined. A perspective that treats the evidence as ideologically informed representations can resolve the previous dichotomies and indicate the potential in the study of prehistoric social relations.

A comparison of the ritual and profane aspects of Germanic society in Jutland, Denmark, from 500 BC to AD 600, as interpreted from funerary, votive and settlement contexts, highlights the accumulation of worldly power through the sacrifice of precious goods to the supernatural. The whole period was one of increasing wealth-destruction which halted abruptly in the seventh century AD. Agricultural production expanded until the fifth century when there occurred an economic crisis which continued into the sixth century. Within this long-term cycle of expansion and decline were three smaller cycles. In the first (500–50 BC) increasing quantities of prestigious items were sacrificed as votive offerings. At the end of the cycle they were placed in graves and no longer in votive contexts, possibly representing a transition in spiritual allegiance from deities of the bogs, lakes and other natural features, to ancestral powers. At the same time there were important changes in the privatization of agricultural property. In the second cycle (50 BC–AD 200) there was a cumulative increase in wealth-items as grave goods, accompanying a gradual elaboration and reworking of ritualized roles and categories. After a period of social unrest in the third century there was another increase in the removal of gold and silver from circulation (either in a single ‘horizon’ or gradually) between AD 400 and 600. Agricultural expansion and technological innovations within each cycle accompanied progressively unequal social relations.

This chapter focuses on the manner in which ideologically informed representations serve to naturalise the arbitrary nature of the social order. The construction of an eighteenth-century garden is shown to employ a number of means towards this aim. Through the use of classical quotations and the development of a concept of precedence with juridical associations, the garden presents a particular rationalisation of time, which also denies its own transient nature. Its geometry and optics exemplified in its use of perspective, serve towards a controlled rationalisation of space. Overall the garden not only acts as representation but also works as an instrument for the close experimental observation and control of nature. The garden and the segmented and ordered form of Georgian architecture can be related to the contradictions of a society proclaiming freedom and independence but maintaining a system of slavery. The deliberately planned wilderness garden exemplifies such contradictions.

The eighteenth century in Tidewater Virginia and Maryland is today the subject of intensive, rigorous, and multidisciplinary research. There are few areas in the United States where there is more work done by creative people using materials from the past. Historians, architectural historians, folklorists, and historical archaeologists are all producing studies which offer the first new ideas on Chesapeake society since the turn of the century and which are giving the area an historical importance rivalling that long claimed for New England. The Chesapeake is being endowed with a deeper historical identity.

The curvature and components of the vault

The vault as a whole

The posterior part of the calvaria of Zinjanthropus is well filled and well rounded (pls. 9–12). From the external occipital protuberance, the posterior parieto-occipital plane rises steeply for a considerable distance before turning forwards over the summit of the vault. This striking feature, brought out in Fig. 1, was stressed by Leakey as the third of his twenty diagnostic criteria of Zinjanthropus (1959a, p. 492). However, Robinson (1960) claimed that this feature applied also to Paranthropus. In Fig. 1, Robinson's (1961) reconstruction of Paranthropus, based on the crushed specimen SK 48, has a remarkably similar parietooccipital contour to that of Zinjanthropus, whereas the earlier reconstruction of SK 48 by Broom and Robinson (1952, p. 11) had a very different parietooccipital contour from that of Zinjanthropus. As none of the specimens of Paranthropus is sufficiently undistorted to permit the contour in this region to be reconstructed accurately, it seems very likely that the Zinjanthropus-like contour in Robinson's later (1961) reconstruction has been influenced, at least subconsciously, by the intact parieto-occipital contour of Zinjanthropus. Robinson's (1960) claim that the steep parieto-occipital plane occurs as well in Paranthropus may therefore be discounted, at least until more intact cranial material is discovered. Australopithecus (Sts 5) has a more evenly-curved parieto-occipital surface.

Part of the full rounded contour of the vault is contributed by the high, steep, parietotemporal walls (pls. 9 and 11).

No natural endocast was found with the cranial remains of Zinjanthropus. However, so much of the endocranial surface of the calvaria was preserved as to make possible the preparation of a plaster endocast (pl. 28). This was effected by me, with the invaluable expert assistance of Messrs A. R. Hughes and T. W. Kaufman of the staff of the Department of Anatomy, University of the Witwatersrand. Approximately the posterior twothirds of the brain-case was virtually complete; likewise, the frontal poles and rostral regions. The area between had to be reconstructed. There is little doubt as to the intervening distance, because of a satisfactory approximation between the anterior and posterior calvarial parts. On the basis cranii, the gap includes the anterior part of the middle cranial fossa and most of the anterior cranial fossa; thus, the precise extent of the temporal lobes and the exact position of the temporal poles could not be determined from the surviving cranial bones. A guide to these points is provided by the body of the sphenoid, most of which is present as far forward as the posterior half or more of the hypophyseal fossa on its dorsum, while ventrally a substantial part of the vomer articulates with the sphenoidal rostrum. In higher Primates, the medial aspect of the temporal poles abuts close to the body of the sphenoid.

The maxillary incisors

The central incisors

Both I1's are present and damaged, most of the enamel being lost from the mesial and distal faces, as well as from the distal part of the labial face of the right I1. The teeth are worn, the right more than the left, so that the height from the cervical line to the incisal edge is 8·1 mm. on the left and 7·4 mm. on the right. Thus the morphological features on only about the cervical two-thirds of the crown remain for examination.

The lingual surface is slightly shovel-shaped; the bases of the faintly raised, mesial and distal marginal ridges flank the lingual fossa. A small pit lies near the base of each marginal ridge, close to the mesial and the distal margins of the tooth respectively. Between the two marginal ridges are the cervical parts of two lingual depressions (‘mesiale und distale Vertikalgrube’ of Remane, 1960), separated in the[midst]of the lingual fossa by a slight cervicoincisal elevation (‘mittleren Hauptleiste’).

At the base of this cervico-incisal elevation, that is, on the upper part of the lingual face, is a rounded protuberance: we shall follow Robinson (1956, p. 23) in calling this the gingival eminence, and it corresponds to the ‘basale Verdickung der mittleren Hauptleiste’ which Remane (1960, p. 782) synonymises with tuberculum linguale or tuberculum dentale. The prominence is named ‘dental tubercle’ by Sicher (1949, p. 210).

The discovery by Dr and Mrs Leakey of an australopithecine skull in Bed I of the deposits of the Olduvai Gorge is of major importance for two reasons. First, the skull was found at a stratigraphical level that has been dated with reasonable assurance by the potassium-argon method to well over a million years, indeed probably as much as one and three-quarters of a million. Second, the skull, though fragmented, was found to be practically complete except for the lower jaw; it was possible to piece together the broken fragments with fair accuracy and to demonstrate that it was almost free of distortion and deformation in spite of its prolonged period of fossilisation. In fact, apart from one specimen discovered by the late Dr Robert Broom at Sterkfontein in South Africa in 1947, no australopithecine skull is yet known that approaches in completeness the Olduvai skull.

It is particularly fortunate that the responsibility for the detailed study of this skull should have been given to Professor P. V. Tobias, for he has had many years of experience in dealing with fossil hominid material as well as a wide acquaintance with the skeletal structures of the higher Primates and their degree of variability. I do not suppose that any such meticulous and exhaustive description of a fossil hominid skull as is to be found in this monograph has ever before been made, even if account is taken of Boule's description of the Chapelle-aux-Saints skull, or of Weidenreich's account of the crania of Chinese representatives of Homo erectus.