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Materiality, Technology, and Constructing Social Knowledge Through Bodily Representation: a View from Prehistoric Guernsey, Channel Islands

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Materiality, Technology, and Constructing Social Knowledge Through Bodily Representation: a View from Prehistoric Guernsey, Channel Islands European Journal of Archaeology 17 (2) 2014, 248–263 Materiality, Technology, and Constructing Social Knowledge through Bodily Representation: A View from Prehistoric Guernsey, Channel Islands SHEILA KOHRING Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, UK The role of the human body in the creation of social knowledge—as an ontological and/or aesthetic category—has been applied across social theory. In all these approaches, the body is viewed as a locus for experience and knowledge. If the body is a source of subjective knowledge, then it can also become an important means of creating ontological categories of self and society. The materiality of human rep- resentations within art traditions, then, can be interpreted as providing a means for contextualizing and aestheticizing the body in order to produce a symbolic and structural knowledge category. This paper explores the effect of material choices and techniques of production when representing the human body on how societies order and categorize the world. Keywords: materiality, body, representation, stone, Channel Islands EVOKING THE BODY and experience to transfer anthropo- morphic characteristics and actions onto The body as a category for the creation of physical objects. If we imbue objects with symbolic and structural, or ontological, anthropomorphic characteristics as part of knowledge within a given society has been the cognitive process, it does not seem a well discussed (e.g. Mauss, 1979; Turner, great leap to assume, as many do, that 1984; Laqueur, 1990; Schilling, 1993; these objects can exert some level of Csordas, 1994; Grosz, 1995; Boyer, 1996; agency within society (as discussed by Gilchrist, 2000; Smith, 2004; Nanoglou, Latour, 1991, 2005; Gell, 1998). Material 2009a). Thus, displaying the body seems a has its own agency (Ingold, 2007; see also very personal, emotive act. When we Tilley, 2004) and this agency, along with encounter it in representations, the body that of the producer(s), is materialized can evoke a privileged intimacy or intuitive during the production process. These rep- knowledge. Boyer (1996) argues that the resentations are not static and their agency body is an intuitive ontological category may be triggered depending on their phys- based on an experiential understanding of ical and social context. self that is projected outwards onto others The potency of the image rests in the and onto the physical and material world. materiality of the representation and Hence, it is a cognitive extension of self engagement with representations within © European Association of Archaeologists 2014 DOI 10.1179/1461957114Y.0000000055 This license permits others to re-use, reproduce, re-distribute and/or build upon your work, including for commercial purposes, providing they acknowledge you as author, and attribute original publication to the journal. Downloaded fromManuscript https://www.cambridge.org/core received 14 August 2013,. IP address: 170.106.34.90, on 30 Sep 2021 at 03:48:44, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/termsaccepted 30 January 2014,. https://doi.org/10.1179/1461957114Y.0000000055 revised 13 January 2014 Kohring – Materiality, Technology, and Constructing Social Knowledge through Bodily Representation 249 social contexts. When the body is materia- ways. Two frameworks, in particular, may lized in representation, particular have pertinence and could be seen to structuring principles—or aesthetics— overlap in useful and positive ways: embo- affect choices about what material and diment and corporeality approaches. If we technologies are used to make these consider how the materiality of human images (see Nanoglou, 2009b). Aesthetics representations can alter perception of the and structuring principles here are con- socially meaningful body, we can use the flated somewhat, but are connected in the concept of somatic modes of attention to sense that they are inherently social, his- link between ontologies of self and the torical, and mediate relationships by world around the self (Csordas, 1993: expressing idealized principles and prac- 138). The concept of corporeal realism, or tices specific to society (Gell, 1998). a recognition of the body as a shared bio- Representation of the body, however, is logical and social basis through which we not enough. The body-as-knowledge experience the world, is helpful in priori- needs a social context of engagement to tizing the body as a fundamental building structure and frame it. By engaging with block through which knowledge is created representation, a sense of bodily technique as it accepts knowledge as built upon the and aesthetic emerges and the knowledge real and concrete body-in-the-world (see transmitted through the category of body Schilling, 1993, 2005: 12–13). As a start- is reinforced. These engagements are per- ing premise, corporeal realism provides a formed and enacted within social framework on which we can consider how communities that provide the framework physical representations of the body might for understanding and making both be one way in which societies and com- actions and images meaningful. Continued munities materialize basic social categories engagement with body representations and ontological structures. within their socially appropriate contexts The basic premise for this interpretative provides meaning to the body. Engage- article arises from the belief that techno- ment defines what is an appropriate, logical practices are an embodied way that essential, and ideal socialized body within people create their physical world and that that society. New practices may emerge the human–material–technological and rework the materialized body, but the relationship is indivisible (Latour, 1991, images continue to shape social knowledge 2002; Ingold, 2000). I argue that there is until they are dispossessed and forgotten. a dialectic relationship between the way Understanding knowledge systems the body is materially produced and the through past representations is first and way the body itself is experienced and con- foremost influenced by our own aesthetic ceptualized. As such, the choices in the of body categories and what they mean to material used (stone, clay, bone), the tech- us. But, through contextualizing represen- niques employed in the production tations—not as self-evident and static (painting, incising, chipping) and the idealized forms, but as active agents in setting in which the finished object resides knowledge construction—they materialize (size and accessibility) all reflect percep- ontological categories of the past society. tions of the human body as an ontological This materialization can be explored category within a society. This paper through technology, technique, associated explores the construction of body images practices, and performances. Approaching in terms of material, technology, and this through appropriate theoretical frame- context. It draws upon three examples works, however, can be achieved in various from the island of Guernsey in the Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.34.90, on 30 Sep 2021 at 03:48:44, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1179/1461957114Y.0000000055 250 European Journal of Archaeology 17 (2) 2014 Channel Islands (United Kingdom), but is and occupation on Guernsey spanning not necessarily exclusive to these examples, from the Palaeolithic to the present (see and the material and techniques utilized in Sebire, 2005, for an overview). Approxi- the production of the bodily images dis- mately thirty miles northeast of the cussed were widespread across the French coastline, the community was, by continent and spanned from the Neolithic the Neolithic, linked into social networks well into the Iron Age. The recurrence of spanning the western European Atlantic material and techniques used to create fringe. This connection is evidenced by material bodies demonstrates the solidity the shared burial traditions and use of of these concepts as building blocks for communal chambered tombs such as Le social knowledge systems. Varde, Le Fouillages, and Le Creux és Faïes and by settlements with similar lithic and pottery traditions such as those found MAKING STONE BODIES:THE CASE FOR recently at Camp Varouf (Garrow & STELAE IN PREHISTORIC GUERNSEY Sturt, in press) and the airport site (de Jersey, personal communication, 2012). The small island of Guernsey lies off the While settlement and monumental Breton coast of France and is the second tomb structures tell a story of life and largest island in the Channel Islands death on the island, the standing stones (Figure 1). Physically separated from the that remain scattered across the island continent since the Mesolithic period, the provide another aspect to understanding island was not, however, socially isolated community, identity, and society. In par- and there is evidence of human activity ticular, several of these standing stones Figure 1. Map of Guernsey, Channel Islands and the location of the three images discussed in the text. Map: K. Boulden and S. Kohring. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.34.90, on 30 Sep 2021 at 03:48:44, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1179/1461957114Y.0000000055 Kohring – Materiality, Technology, and Constructing Social Knowledge through Bodily Representation
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