Painting as Agency, Style as Structure: Innovations in Mimbres Pottery Designs from Southwest New Mexico

The act of painting a design is a form of agency, and the overall style of that design in part can be conceptualized as a kind of structure. This perspective is used as a basis for analyzing chronological changes in designs on Mimbres Black-on-white pottery (ca. AD 750-1150) from Southwest New Mexic...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of archaeological method and theory 2005-12, Vol.12 (4), p.313-334
Main Authors: Hegmon, Michelle, Kulow, Stephanie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agency
Archaeological paradigms
Archaeology
Art pottery
Ceramics
Design
Design analysis
Field archaeology
Humans
Material culture
Methodology
Paleoanthropology
Pottery
Social reproduction
Social structure
Social structures
Technological innovation
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The act of painting a design is a form of agency, and the overall style of that design in part can be conceptualized as a kind of structure. This perspective is used as a basis for analyzing chronological changes in designs on Mimbres Black-on-white pottery (ca. AD 750-1150) from Southwest New Mexico. Specific focus is on a methodology that can be used to detect innovations, that is, the introduction of novel designs that are incorporated into the design corpus and thus transform the structure. The conceptualization of a particular tradition (in this instance, pottery painting) as a form of structure analogous to general structure in Giddens' sense thus provides important insights into the recursive relationship between agency and structure.
ISSN:1072-5369
1573-7764
DOI:10.1007/s10816-005-8451-5