Assemblage Theory and the Capacity to Value: An Archaeological Approach from Cache Cave, California, USA

Abstract

New discoveries from a Californian cave have found a remarkable assemblage of cached perishable and other artefacts. Comprised of baskets, cordage, bone, antler, leather, food residues and other materials, the assemblages are dispersed through four caves in the largest ever cache discovered in the borderland region attributable to the native Californian linguistic group known as the Chumash. This paper develops a methodology based upon DeLanda's philosophy of assemblages and Graeber's anthropological theory of value. Importantly, following Normark, it is argue that assemblage theory needs to be operationalized into a methodological approach in order to apply it archaeologically. This methodology illustrate how a capacity analysis of the Cache Cave assemblage relates to values within the society which cached it by revealing the relational capacities within assemblages and relative capacities between them. Importantly, as a scalable approach, capacity analysis allows the investigation of the heterogeneous dynamics within complex societies.

Metal burial: Understanding caching behaviour and contact material culture in Australia's NE Kimberley

“…In contrast to the North American example outlined above (cf. Robinson, 2017), the cache in the Kimberley seems to acquire meaning through separation and avoidance.…”

“…He puts forward the idea that bundles can both reflect and capture past relationships as well as establish new ones, emphasising the multi-temporality of assemblages, signalling and creating relationships (Pauketat, 2013b; see also Strathern, 1992). Finally, Robinson (2017) has explored DeLanda's assemblage theory in an analysis of South-Central Californian Chumash caches. The intentionally deposited assemblages at Cache Cave, within the interior Emigdiano Chumash borderlands, comprise collections of artefacts and raw materials (basketry, cordage, lithics, bone tools, antler objects, shell beads, feathers, etc.).…”

Computational Photography, 3-D Modeling, and Online Publication of Basketry for Cache Cave, California

“…Caching was a common if poorly understood native practice across the region, with sites typically defined as small equipment stashes in discrete rock shelters (Bryne et al 2016; Whitby 2012). Excavations from 2012 to 2018 at Cache Cave revealed a wide range of perishable materials, including cordage, bone, antler, shell, leather, wood, food residues, and baskets (McArthur and Robinson 2016; Robinson 2017). Dates so far acquired indicate prehistoric human use of the shelters for more than 2,000 years, including the potential use of the cave in the ethnohistoric period beginning in the AD 1700s.…”

Reciprocal exchange, value, and forms of transaction: an archaeological approach from the Atacama Desert (northern Chile)

“…These create frontier moments, where exchanges function as an encounter between two or more cultures. These transfers serve to define biographies and mutual conceptions and set them in motion in a multi‐functional scenario where entanglement results in unexpected cultural production (Kopytoff 1986; Robinson 2013; 2017; Thomas 1991). In creating these exchanges, the foundations of a Netscape are built that situate and relocate the socioecological fame of the subjects, people, and things that materialize worlds lived at short and long distances from their homes (Ingold 2011; Munn 1986; Thomas 1991).…”