About Technological Style

What is it?           

For the past several decades, anthropologists have stated that technology has not been given sufficient attention in the field.[1]  In the past, with the culture historical paradigm, technology was mostly used in terms of very descriptive accounts of artifacts devoid of the social context and processes that now guide technological style.  With the New Archaeology, technology was seen as a necessary element of society, but an adaptive one in general.  The nuances of technological choice and activity were not important in the general processual view, especially when considering Binford’s idea of culture as the “extrasomatic means of adaptation.”  Technology was considered an evolutionary and adaptive function, while style was secondary to technology.  This is what Pfaffenberger describes as the “Standard View” of technology, which is an insufficient tool for understanding social systems that involve higher-order aspects like meaning, identity, and ideology.[2]

Technological style is a theoretical approach to anthropology from as early as the 1940s with the work of Leroi-Gourhan, who coined the term chaine operatoire, or the "operational sequence."[3]  Those who have used technological style see technology as a manifestation of social choices and ideologies.  Style is interdependent with technology and, together, these cultural phenomena form a tool by which to interpret the past.  Lechtman maintains that we must recognize that not only do objects possess style, but the activities which produce them are also stylistic.  Technical modes of operation, attitudes toward materials, specific organization of labor, and ritual observances are “elements which are unified nonrandomly in a complex of formal relationships,” making up technological style.[4]  The main reason for supporting this approach to material culture, says Lechtman, is that the technological subsystem is the one cultural feature archaeologists are capable of reconstructing.  She employs archaeometric methods and ethnoarchaeological research to do just that.[5]

        Moche earspool                      

Lechtman has often applied technological style to Andean metallurgy; this is an appropriate example since she is the most widely known of Andean metallurgists and has studied general metal technology extensively.  She argues that the use of European standards of technological innovation would not apply to Andean societies because the ideology of the cultural complex of the area has such a different effect on technology.  In this way, technology is somewhat adaptive, but not only to the environment.  Lechtman provides us with a systems approach -- rather than a monocausal explanation -- for the selective use of alloys and surface extraction that “wastes” some precious metal within a metal Andean object.  Because of the Andean reverence for the sun, its connection to gold, and the belief in living yet inanimate objects, metalwork needs its interior to be intact and of the “essence” of the sacred material.  These principles can also apply to Andean weaving technology and the tendency to integrate style into the structure of textiles, necessitating a much more difficult, time-consuming technique than possible alternatives available to weavers.[6]  Especially when a society acts in a way that is less efficient, Lechtman sees an opportunity to examine technological process in terms of technological style.

              Tiwanaku style tunic

Steinberg was  another early technological style theorist, participating in the 1975 American Ethnological Society volume with Lechtman.  He defines technology as the subsystem that interacts with other subsystems and is concerned with the following: procurement of raw materials, ancillary technologies, material choice, choice of processes for working, relationship between function and appearance, deposition of findspot, socioeconomic status of craftsmen, and craftsman’s relationship with the patron or market.[7]  Many of these functions are referred to as the chaine opératoire by Lemonnier, van der Leeuw, and others.  Additionally, Steinberg outlines the various subsystems that directly interact with technological style in his systems model: nature of material; inherent, cultural aesthetic or constraints; and socioeconomics.  He also recognizes technological style’s relationship with other aspects in the system, such as environmental adaptation, subsistence pattern, religion, and trade.  Figure 1 is a graphic representation of the models discussed by Lechtman and Steinberg, combined into one, and figure 2 is an application of that graphic model to the Inka khipu.

Technological style was intended to integrate a processual, empirical approach with structuralist principles of shared, recurring behavioral patterns.  Lechtman does recognize the difficulty in connecting behavior to technology with certainty, but argues that objects provide us with a shared cultural code.  This assumption relies on the principles of structuralism; she is looking for the rules behind technological choices that are characteristic of the society (not the individual, as this type of technological style comes in later with Lemonnier).  According to Lechtman, science can ultimately interpret technological history in a most objective manner.[8]  Her theoretical approach evolves from a passive approach to technological style as a social phenomenon,[9] to a process occurring in the mind of purposeful individuals under cognitive archaeology and agency theory.[10]  

Ten years after 1975 American Ethnological Society meeting, Kingery published a volume on technology and style that dealt with the scientific capacity to study the relationship between these two aspects of culture in a society.  Some essential points that came out of the volume that were relevant to the theory of technological style were:

1) style is bounded by cultural lines while technology transcends them;[11]

2) even though two objects are similar in appearance, they could be the result of many various sequences of production activities, thus the chaine opératoire is a productive way to compare the details of technological processes;[12]

3) technological style is necessarily scientific, incorporating many analytical methods, including SEM, petrography, xeroradiography, XRD, and others;

4) an apparent decline in quality of craft production may actually be a result of an intentional adaptive measure;[13]

5) new technologies bring about new styles, as they evolve in tandem.

In 1992, Lemonnier published a small volume on the importance of using the chaine opératoire and how to apply it to ethnology and archaeology.[14]  He addresses technological choices and the “social representation of technologies.”[15]  Most notably, he criticizes Hodder, Tilley, and other symbolic archaeologists for ignoring technology and function and limiting studies to the artifact.  Lemonnier states that archaeologists can only understand symbol when they first understand the anthropology of technological systems, examining the social relations of production.[16]  On the other hand, Van Peer and Wurz criticize the reliance on the chaine opératoire, saying that it is not part of an emic viewpoint and should not be used to judge cognition.[17]

At the same, citing Marx on the importance of studying technology, Pfaffenberger states that anthropologists have neglected the opportunity to fully investigate technology, which is a “total social phenomenon” (emphasis Pfaffenberger’s).[18]  He rejects technological somnambulism (denies a causal link between technology and social formation) and technological determinism (makes technology the cause of social formation), saying that these fail to account for technology as a system that has an effect on other systems within a society (these were used by processualists).[19]  Another approach to technology that is rejected by those who subscribe to the idea of technological style, as Pfaffenberger does, is “technological evolution.”  We cannot assign evolutionary levels of progression to technologies in other cultures.  For instance, to assume that because Andean weavers never used the European floor loom, they were not as technologically advanced is to impose a Western framework upon a different type of social system.[20]  Contrary to this sort of assumption is the truth that Andean textile producers developed highly sophisticated means of manipulating the structure of cloth to express certain ideas.  Many of these technologies are more difficult to achieve than other methods that would produce the same effect,[21] but like the Shaker furniture craftsmen that Leone refers to, creation was a religious exercise.  In that case, once more advanced technology was introduced into the Shaker process, the society deteriorated because the technological style had previously been acted out through hand-building a chair and was part of the Shaker identity and ideological subsystem.[22]  Taking away the act of creating by hand affected the whole social system.

            Thus, we return to the useful concept of chaine opératoire, which van der Leeuw and many others besides Lemonnier advocate.[23]  Specifically, chaine opératoire is the “range of processes by which naturally occurring raw materials are selected, shaped, and transformed into usable cultural products.”[24]  Each operation within the chain is vital and interdependently linked to the others, forming a unique marker of social identity on each artifact.  According to Cresswell, technology is the process and the chaine opératoire is the basic unit.[25]  Van der Leeuw expands on the concept, saying that archaeologists should look at the choices that were not made in production, in addition to those that were.  This will communicate ideas about cognition.[26]

            The final and current phase of the technological style tradition is cognitive archaeology.  The theoretical framework of technology has evolved into an approach incorporating the ideas of Renfrew’s cognitive archaeology, as well as agency.[27]  Chaine opératoire is the tool by which archaeologists continue to examine technological style, looking for signs of each potter or weaver possessing their own, unique ideas about production.[28]  Much like Lechtman originally suggested that archaeologists reconstruct ancient technologies, more recent work seeks to identify the “conceptual operative schema.”  To achieve this, one must observe “intentions, concepts, evaluation of constraints, preferences within a group of equivalent methods, as well as technical decisions.”[29]  With this knowledge, the archaeologist can get to the bottom of behavior in a systematic way.       

Origins and History

            Technological style has been a minor area of study in anthropology for about the past thirty years, beginning with the volume edited by Lechtman and Merrill.[30]  However, one could argue for its origination much earlier in the ethnological studies of material culture technology at the turn of the century.  Through time, technological style has morphed from Lechtman’s ideal to Lemonnier’s and into the hands of the cognitive archaeologists, including van der Leeuw.  It came out of a processual approach to the objective measure of production as a way to get closer to the issue of ideology, but this was rejected as not being entirely scientific.  Technological style also modeled itself within systems theory (Binford) at the start as well, which has been softened.  The archaeometric analysis of archaeological materials still continues, but with a much more nuanced perspective of what superstructural information can be extracted from the record.

Cultural Context

            Technological style and the anthropology of technology movements came out of the middle of the twentieth century, a time marked by the Cold War and an increase in technological capabilities, including the first digital computers.  With the looming threat of nuclear power, this would have been a time of reflection on technological capabilities and processes.  An emphasis on studying the social reasons for technological innovation would have been especially appropriate at that point.  Also, from the 1940s to 1960s, the “Green Revolution” occurred.  Developing nations were given the means by which to intensify food production.  This phenomenon affected less developed nations, as well as the mindsets of anthropologists in much the same way as the technological and scientific revolution of the 1960s.  All of these events led up to Lechtman’s announcement of a new direction in technological studies in 1975.   

Early Influences/Ancestors

            Initially, Claude Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism was a major contributor to the birth of technological style.  Lemonnier cites him when talking about technological choices.  Marcel Mauss coined the term chaine opératoire, and is the ancestor of the movement to promote study of the operational sequence in anthropology.[31]  André Leroi-Gourhan used chaine opératoire in the 1950s in lectures, greatly influencing Lemonnier’s approach.[32]  Leroi-Gourhan also outlined the various milieu that he saw as interrelated with technology and the technological milieu itself in 1945, including the phenomenon of “unfavorable technical milieu.”[33]

Current Trends

A popular response to technological style in contemporary archaeology has been to adapt certain aspects of the approach.  Today, many retain the use of archaeometric techniques in analyzing the chaine opératoire, but focus on individual intentionality in production and decision over group-shared, unconscious ideology.  Most now argue that cognition can be realized in prehistory only by examining the operational sequence and its many variations.  Often, the same result can be found with different operational chains; thus, the important part of material production and technological style is not the end result but rather the process of getting there.  What began as a culture historical/processual subtheory has grown into an interdisciplinary, multi-paradigm approach to technology as a “total social phenomenon,” to borrow Pfaffenberger’s term.  At the moment, cognitive archaeology and social agency are taking on interdisciplinary approaches to technological style and technical studies.[34] 

Accomplishments

            Many would agree that the study of technological style has taken technical studies and material culture studies into a very useful, applicable, pragmatic realm.  Hegmon addresses the improvements that the scholars working with this theoretical approach have put forward for anthropologists and archaeologists.[35]  Some of the accomplishments that relate to this movement include: recognition that style has function and is active, recognition that technology has style, and an understanding of technological choices. 

Criticisms/Points of Reaction

            Technological Style in its original form was criticized for being too passive in its approach to human agency.  The case studies presented by Lechtman and Merrill (1975) took a “normative” view of social behavior and were thus considered to be too “culture historical.”[36]  The post-processual proponents of interpreting agency and cognition in prehistoric technology also take issue with early forms of technological style.  In fact, while Lemonnier uses many of the same ideas, such as the relationships between material, social, and ideological concepts, he does not cite Lechtman.    See Dobres 2000 for a processual plus (as Hegmon puts it) take on technology and agency.