T h e geometric decoraticle art of the Shipibo Indians, Peruvian montana, is produced by women balanced between a cultural imperatiue f o r personal innoaation and submission to the constraints of traditional style. T h e experimental commissioning of painted Shipibo textile samplers using a rule-based approach reveals that additional variables in the Deetz INTRODUCTIONAN ETHNOGRAPHIC INSTANCE OF THE OPERATION of social constraints on individual expression of art style among the Shipibo Indians of the Peruvian montafia is examined in light of the Deetz-Longacre hypothesis of archaeological theory. While the recent tendency has been to criticize that position on the diachronic level as a simplistic analogy based on transfer of a limited range of ethnographic data to archaeological materials according to PEI'ER ROE is assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Delaware He received his Ph.D from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1973. Since 1969 he has worked on the central and upper Ucayali River region of the Peruvian jungle and has published works on both the archaeology of the Late Prehistoric Cumancaya complex and the ethnography and ethnoarchaeology of the Shipibo-Conibo Indians. He has also published on the ancient Chavin art style of the highlands and coast of Peru. His major interest is the relationship of ideology to material culture and he has just finished a book on lowland South Amerindian cosmological systems. an outmoded body of ethnological theory, the present instance shows that it may present an interesting hypothesis to test against synchronic events. The material presented consists of ethnographic observations, for which the motivations had their origins in archaeological theory. The observations also stand on their own, however, so that those readers interested primarily in aesthetic anthropology may wish to skim through the archaeological argument until they reach the presentation of the ethnographic instance, in the section entitled "The Shipibo Case." There have been parallel attempts in ethnology to derive social structure from art style and vice versa. Tooker's (1968) paper and Wolfe's (1969) study attempted cross-cultural associations between the existence of plastic art and the presence of sodalities and social cleavages among male artists in Africa and North America. Fischer's (1961) article on the correspondences between art style and social stratification is another example of using art as a mirror of social structure. Although I try to do the same thing in this paper, I am interested also in art on its own terms and hope that both aims will be served adequately here.Before the particular ethnographic case is presented, an inquiry must be made into the general history of the Deetz-Longacre hypothesis as an interesting case in the dialectics of ideas, first as it developed in North American archaeology, and second, as it affected anthropological archaeology in South America. HISTORY OF THE DEETZ-LONGACRE HYPOTHESIS IN NORTH AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGYAs Sacket...

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It's fun to do things you're not made to do, like going to the moon or living under the ocean. I was playing when I invented the aqualung. I'm still playing. I think play is the most serious thing in the world.J ACQUES YVES COUSTEAU This paper inventories and illustrates the great range of cultural factors that constrain aesthetic and technical styles. It also offers some comments on the nature of style itself. The paper is organized broadly into three parts: (1) a definition of style and a discussion of its hierarchical nature; (2) a listing of the multiple social and technological variables that condition stylistic output; and (3) an analysis of the ideational factors that articulate style with self and society on the mythic and structural levels.I write about style as an archaeologist, ethnologist, and artist. My work has encompassed tribalthrough state-level societies ranging over four geographically remote and ecologically diverse, but culturally connected, regions of South America and the Caribbean: the Peruvian montana, the highlands and coast of Peru , the Guianan highlands, and the Greater Antilles. I have studied a wide selection of media within both living and dead cultures. These include myth, song, ethnoastronomy, ethnotaxonomy, ritual, ceremony, body art, settlement and space, textiles, ceramics, basketry, wood carving, lithic artifacts , rock art, sculpture, and architecture.Archaeology, ethnology, and art each provide contrasting and complementary perspectives on style, with advantages and disadvantages. Archaeology looks at style in "closed," or extinct, "archaeographic" complexes bounded by the finite material output of dead producers. Archaeology shows the clearer general structure of a smaller sample. Preservational biases filter out much variation, and in the process, highlight a style'S underlying principles and major subdivisions. By providing chronology, archaeology also resolves stylistic processes over time as cycles of fashion. These cycles can occur 28 Peter G. Roe within traditions defined by local continuity, among horizons constituted by rapid interregional similarities, and across series comprised by a "sloping horizon" of slow, interareal movement. Even the anonymity of dead informants, to the extent that they are recognized as individuals (Gunn 1977), masks the particularizing effects of engaged and often conflicted live persons, thereby emphasizing the general processes that enmesh them.Archaeological "individuals" form a deceptively homogeneous and passive mass of actors subject to external pressures. Archaeology also fosters a passive view of the artifact. It is easy to take the object as a "given," rather than as an alternative component in the creative process.In contrast, ethnology studies "open" ethnographic complexes created by living artists and artisans. Ethnology provides depth and complexity via interactive questioning and observation. It also integrates elements from diverse domains that don't "fossilize," such as song, myth, and rite. Thus, it emphasizes creativity ...

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