Conceptual Metaphor in the Archaeological Record: Methods and an Example from the American Southwest

Abstract

This paper attempts to unify recent theorizing on cultural meaning in material culture using the notion of conceptual metaphor. Research in several disciplines suggests that conventional metaphorical concepts are central to cultural cognition. Ethnographic studies and psychological experiments indicate that conceptual metaphors are expressed in numerous forms of human expression, including speech, ritual, narrative, and material culture. Generalizations on the nature and structure of metaphor emerging from cognitive linguistic research can be used to develop methods for reconstructing ancient metaphors from archaeological evidence. In a preliminary application, I argue that pottery designs from the Mesa Verde region of the American Southwest were conceptualized as textile fabrics, and suggest that connections between these media derived from a worldview grounded in container imagery. The ability to decipher conceptual metaphors in prehistoric material culture opens up many new avenues for research, including the role of worldview in cultural evolution, and the discovery of cultural continuities between archaeological cultures and historic ethnolinguistic groups.

Social Distance in Settled Communities the Conceptual Metaphor, Social Distance is Physical Distance, in Action

“…It is not enough to merely claim that some domain is structured by conceptual metaphor. Archaeologists need either to establish a cognitive or neural formation process, as I have done here (see also Wiseman 2014), or else show that the domain has the characteristics that conceptual metaphors are known to have, as Ortman (2000) did in his analysis of Tewa pottery decoration. But, once a formation process has been established, archaeologists can employ the concept in all comparable contexts.…”

“…Scarcely a dozen articles by archaeologists have employed it (Ortman 2000(Ortman , 2006(Ortman , 2011(Ortman , 2012Potter 2002;Culley 2003Culley , 2006aHays-Gilpin 2006;Whitley 2008;Loubser 2010;Gill 2010;Wiseman 2014Wiseman , 2015.…”

Negotiations with the Animate Forest: Hunting Shrines in the Guatemalan Highlands

“…Bone deposits represent the remains of household food consumption and important religious practices. Thus, as others have noted, sacredness is not necessarily an innate quality of a particular object or act but is created through the object's use in specific contexts (e.g., Bradley 2005;Brown 2004;Fogelin 2007;Ortman 2000;Plunket 2002;Tilley 1999;Walker 1999). In this case, the specialized handling and unique life-histories of bones were the result of local knowledge about the regeneration of important species and accountability to important spirit actors.…”

Continuity and change in the evolution of religion and political organization on pre-Columbian Puerto Rico

“…It has been abundantly documented that symbolic expressions of the Native American cosmos are reproduced in many forms and at multiple intersecting conceptual scales, ranging from the human body to small portable objects to houses to villages to entire landscapes (Arroyo-Kalin, 2004, p. 73;Fabian, 1992, p. 160;Falchetti, 2003;Guss, 1989;Jean, 2004;Laughlin, 1997;Oliver, 2005Oliver, , 2009Ortman, 2000;Reichel-Dolmatoff, 1985;Roe, 1982Roe, , 1995aRoe, ,b, 1997Roe, , 2005Seeger, 1989;Staller, 2001;Turner, 2002). Charles Laughlin argued that ''the semiotic aspect of the body image is central to the world view of many peoples [and] that shamanic cultures everywhere place the human body at the center of the cosmos, .…”

“…Ortman's (2000) masterful analysis of Mesa Verde textile and pottery designs powerfully demonstrates the importance of metaphor in cultural cognition. Ortman showed how design rules transcended media and scale, from cloth fabric to ceramic bowl to kiva:…”