Details

Subject(s)

• Technology—Social aspects [Browse]
• Anthropology [Browse]
• Archaeology [Browse]
• Material culture [Browse]

Related name

• Schiffer, Michael B. (Michael Brian), 1947- [Browse]

Series

• Amerind Foundation New World studies series ; no. 5. [More in this series]
• Amerind Foundation New World studies series ; no. 5 [More in this series]

Summary note

"These fourteen original essays accept a dual premise: technology pervades and is embedded in all human activities. By taking that approach, studies of technology address two questions central in anthropological and archaeological research today-accounting for variability and change. These diverse yet interrelated chapters show that to understand human lives, researchers must deal with the material world that all peoples create and inhabit. Therefore an anthropology of technology is not a separate, discrete inquiry; instead, it is a way to connect how people make and use things to any activity studied, ranging from religion, to enculturation, to communication, to art. Each contributor discusses theories and methods and also offers a substantial case study. These detailed inquiries span human societies from the Paleolithic to the computer age. By moving beyond the usual approach of examining ancient technologies, particularly chipped stone and low-fired ceramics, this volume probes for the construction of meaning in the material world across millennia. The authors of these essays find technology to be an inclusive and flexible topic that merges with studies of everything else in human activity."--Amazon.com.

Notes

"An Amerind Foundation publication."

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

• Toward an anthropology of technology / Michael Brian Schiffer
• Beyond art and technology: the anthropology of skill / Tim Ingold
• Thought and production: insights of the practitioner / Charles M. Keller
• Meaning in the making: agency and the social embodiment of technology and art / Marcia-Anne Dobres
• Symbols do not create meanings- activities do: or, why symbolic anthropology needs the anthropology of technology / Bryan Pfaffenberger
• Ritual technology in an extranatural world / William H. Walker
• Toward an archaeology of needs / Richard R. Wilk
• The design process as a critical component of the anthropology of technology / W. David Kingery
• Understanding artifact variability and change: a behavioral framework / James M. Skibo and Michael Brian Schiffer
• Artifice constrained: what determines technological choice? / Peter Bleed
• Building bridges: practice-based ethnographies of contemporary technology / Lucy A. Suchman
• Coordination of technological practice and representations at the boundaries / Meredith Aronson, David Bell, and Dan Vermeer
• From sail to steam at sea in the late nineteenth century / Richard A. Gould
• The explanation of long-term technological change / Michael Brian Schiffer.

Show 11 more Contents items

ISBN

• 0826323693 ((cloth ; : alk. paper))
• 9780826323699 ((cloth ; : alk. paper))
• 9780826350398
• 0826350399

LCCN

00012735

OCLC

45493402

Statement on language in description

Princeton University Library aims to describe library materials in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and communities who create, use, and are represented in the collections we manage. Read more...