Lecture anthropologique des assemblages céramiques

• Main Author: Valentine Roux
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme 2010-03-01
• Series: Les Nouvelles de l’Archéologie
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/nda/957
• ISSN: 0242-7702; 2425-1941

Technological ceramic analysis has the aim of studying the synchronic and diachronic variability of archaeological assemblages from an anthropological angle. It has its bases in actualist studies (anthropology and ethno-archaeology). After a reminded of the principal results obtained in the last decades, methodological results are extracted that are applicable to archaeological assemblages; from these a classification procedure is proposed. The latter, based on the chaîne opératoire concept, allows a controlled image of the various traditions that make up a ceramic assemblage; given that a tradition corresponds to a social entity which can vary in sociological nature and include several production units. On a diachronic level it enables stables features to be distinguished from those that evolve through time, thereby witnessing to endogenous or exogenous evolutionary phenomena. In this way technological ceramic analysis can lay the foundations of many-faceted interpretations, the study of technical traditions being the first stage for subsequently analysing the organisation and distribution of ceramic production, the function of the sites, and, lastly, the ways in which technical and stylistic characteristics evolve.