John Creese
My current research project is entitled 'Being and belonging: the politics of seventeenth-century Wendat bodily transactions.' Utilizing both historic accounts and archaeological materials, I’m exploring tensions between the named and placed Wendat individual, and the dispersal and assimilation of this individual into wider collective social entities. These themes are played out across a range of Wendat performative arenas, including mortuary ceremonialism, ritual violence, craft production, and representational artwork (e.g. in effigy smoking pipes), in ways that are not always wholly coherent with a single model of ‘personhood’. This raises important questions about our tendency to seek uniform models (often simplistically opposed with those of western modernity) for past ways of ‘being-in-the-world’. It may be more productive for archaeologists to consider the conflicting experiences of the body that arise in an array of distinctive genres of practice, and the manner in which resulting tensions are worked out in a variety of contexts.
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method used to identify the work of individual prehistoric potters.
Based on an experiment designed to test the premises on which this
method is based, I argue, contra Hill (1977), that motor- performance–related
attributes are quite sensitive to their social contexts of learning and
change over time. Individuals in two groups, a “social pressure” and an
“individualist” group, completed an incised design on wet clay plaques
on two occasions. Principal components analysis and discriminant analysis
provide strong support for the proposition that individual patterns of
motor performance are directly influenced by the social environment of
their acquisition."
Dans cet article, l'auteur soutient que le mauvais usage des modèles ethnohistoriques a fait en sorte que les archéologues ont fermé les yeux sur beaucoup de données concernant l'organisation spatiale des maisons-longues iroquoiennes. Il a appliqué, pour la première fois, une analyse statistique utilisant la méthode d'estimation par noyau afin d'identifier des patterns de distribution des traces de piquet et des fosses autour des foyers centraux dans un grand échantillon diachronique de planchers de maisons-longues du sud de l'Ontario. Les résultats révèlent un système inédit de structures architecturales de support pour les maisons de la région, et un modèle de distances proxémiques qui a perduré sur plus de cinq siècles."
intensely social universe."
I suggest that the progressive extensification of collective social groups associated with longhouse expansions and village coalescences involved the development of “conjoint” personhood and power in a context of predominantly mutualistic village economies and enduring egalitarian ideals. The ritualization of domestic space during this process reveals that the continual production and extension of social group identities – such as the matrilineage – was contingent upon “social work” accomplished through an ongoing generative engagement with the built environment.
Reviews by John Creese
Drafts by John Creese
method used to identify the work of individual prehistoric potters.
Based on an experiment designed to test the premises on which this
method is based, I argue, contra Hill (1977), that motor- performance–related
attributes are quite sensitive to their social contexts of learning and
change over time. Individuals in two groups, a “social pressure” and an
“individualist” group, completed an incised design on wet clay plaques
on two occasions. Principal components analysis and discriminant analysis
provide strong support for the proposition that individual patterns of
motor performance are directly influenced by the social environment of
their acquisition."
Dans cet article, l'auteur soutient que le mauvais usage des modèles ethnohistoriques a fait en sorte que les archéologues ont fermé les yeux sur beaucoup de données concernant l'organisation spatiale des maisons-longues iroquoiennes. Il a appliqué, pour la première fois, une analyse statistique utilisant la méthode d'estimation par noyau afin d'identifier des patterns de distribution des traces de piquet et des fosses autour des foyers centraux dans un grand échantillon diachronique de planchers de maisons-longues du sud de l'Ontario. Les résultats révèlent un système inédit de structures architecturales de support pour les maisons de la région, et un modèle de distances proxémiques qui a perduré sur plus de cinq siècles."
intensely social universe."
I suggest that the progressive extensification of collective social groups associated with longhouse expansions and village coalescences involved the development of “conjoint” personhood and power in a context of predominantly mutualistic village economies and enduring egalitarian ideals. The ritualization of domestic space during this process reveals that the continual production and extension of social group identities – such as the matrilineage – was contingent upon “social work” accomplished through an ongoing generative engagement with the built environment.