The Archaeology of Consumption

Abstract

A vast range of archaeological studies could be construed as studies of consumption, so it is perhaps surprising that relatively few archaeologists have defined their scholarly focus as consumption. This review examines how archaeology can produce a distinctive picture of consumption that remains largely unaddressed in the rich interdisciplinary consumer scholarship. Archaeological research provides concrete evidence of everyday materiality that is not available in most documentary records or ethnographic resources, thus offering an exceptionally powerful mechanism to examine complicated consumption tactics. In a broad archaeological and anthropological context, consumption studies reflect the ways consumers negotiate, accept, and resist goods-dominant meanings within rich social, global, historical, and cultural contexts. Disclosure StatementThe author is not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings that might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

Diabolical Consumerism: Mass Psychology and Social Production between the Gilded and the Golden Ages

“…Scholars propose that the development of mass consumerism in different times and places opens up new avenues for identification, imagination, agency, and social equity for publics deeply divided by class, race, gender, and other identifications (Campbell 1987;Cohen 1990;Cook et al 1996;Miller 1987Miller , 1995Lipsitz 1990;Mullins 1999Mullins , 2011Breen 2004). Paul Mullins advises, however, that the everyday realities experienced by individual groups operate in contradiction to the idealism offered by capitalist frameworks, taking the form of an abysmal gap (Mullins 1999, p. 188).…”

“…In particular, it illuminates the implications of mass consumerism for the radicalized working class, invoking efforts by elites and professionals to use consumption to ameliorate, conceal, or divert from the material conditions that lead to class tension in previous decades. Previous archaeological work has examined consumer behavior preceding this period or in specific contexts with a limited applicability here (Spencer-Wood 1987;Shackel 1993Shackel , 1998Wall 1994;Mullins 1999Mullins , 2004Mullins , 2011. A few have grappled with consumption as it is tied to the epochal transformations in political economy in and around this time (Purser 1999;Wurst and McGuire 1999;Horning 2001;Wood 2002;Chicone 2006;Camp 2011).…”

Materiality, regimes of value, and the politics of craft production, exchange, and consumption: A case of lime plaster at Teotihuacan, Mexico

“…We need to connect these back to consumption. As discussed above, only a handful of archaeologists have addressed consumption in its own right with exceptions in the study of festive activities (Smith and Schreiber, 2005:202-203;Wells, 2006;Wells and Davis-Salazar, 2007a) and within historical archaeology (Mullins, 2011). But some studies of household economy and non-elite populations explore consumption behaviors based on a consideration of material values to various degrees (e.g., Barber and Joyce, 2007;Carballo et al, 2014b;Hutson, 2010;Levine, 2011;Lohse and Valdes, 2004;Smith, 1987;Wattenmaker, 1994).…”

“…While scholars have emphasized varying aspects of production and exchange, the archaeological study of consumption has mostly been restricted to festive activities (e.g., Bray, 2003;Dietler and Hayden, 2001;Wells and Davis-Salazar, 2007a) and few archaeologists have addressed consumption as a critical theoretical and methodological concept with some exceptions discussed below (see Smith and Schreiber, 2005:202-203;Wells, 2006). This is largely due to: 1) the separation of political and domestic domains, a long-held tradition in Western philosophy dating to Aristotle, in which production and exchange are conceived of as belonging to political domains and consumption to domestic domains; and 2) the historical background of the study of consumer culture within sociocultural anthropology, which is closely associated with the development of modern capitalism (Appadurai, 1986(Appadurai, , 2005Miller, 1987Miller, , 1995, and our assumption that such studies would illuminate little about pre-capitalist societies (see Miller, 1987;Mullins, 2011). In terms of archaeological data analysis, consumption patterns tend to remain descriptive and are treated as a given and as a reflection of social relations, which, in turn, provide insights into the study of production and exchange (e.g., Hirth, 1998).…”

A Changing Climate for Anthropological and Archaeological Research? Improving the Climate-Change Models

“…“Anthropology,” Wilk continues, is well positioned to grapple with these questions because it provides “the scope and sweep of time to step back and offer a bigger picture of how the human species got itself into its present dilemma of rapid growth in greenhouse gas emissions” (2009:268; see also Mullins ).…”