Technological process in pre-colonial Melanesia

Abstract

Technology is a process. As a process, it materialises knowledge, identity and society. In this essay, I introduce the concept of technological process, which draws on the tenets of process archaeology and the anthropology of technology in describing materials and people as dynamic, mutually constitutive lines of flow. These lines are best codified as a chaîne opératoire (operational sequence), which allows us to tease apart socially meaningful, diachronic variation and change. How technological process, as a narrative device and interpretive concept, can be uniquely applied to the pre-colonial past in Melanesia is explored through the production and exchange of red-slipped pottery around Madang in the recent pre-colonial past. Common themes in this research, and other case studies from the area, draw attention to unique aspects of the technological process in northeast New Guinea, which involves growth, personification, magic and ritual. This has implications for how we understand technology in deeper archaeological time.

A template for recording material culture, and a comparison of four Oceanic societies

“…This interest has centred on studying the interactions between individual objects and the people that make and use them. An example of this approach is Dylan Gaffney's examination of pot production and trade at villages around Madang on the north coast of New Guinea (Gaffney 2019). There is also interest in craft traditions and material culture as means for studying long-term cultural evolutionary processes (Buckley 2023a).…”

“…One factor that may be relevant here is that Lewis's collecting activities recorded where items were found, rather than where they were made. This is important in the case of certain trade goods such as pottery, which was made by villages that specialized in this craft, then traded along the coastline by canoe(Gaffney 2019, see also my discussion in Buckley 2023b).…”