Conceptualizing Cultural Hybridization in Archaeology
- Title
- Conceptualizing Cultural Hybridization in Archaeology
- Creator(s)
- Stockhammer, Philipp W.
- Editor(s)
- Stockhammer, Philipp Wolfgang
- Date
- 2012
- Is Part Of
- Conceptualizing Cultural Hybridization: A Transdisciplinary Approach
- Pages
- 43-58
- Language
- eng
- Publisher
- Springer
- Place Published
- Berlin, Heidelberg
- ISBN
- 978-3-642-21846-0
- Abstract
- Today, there continues to be an enormous epistemological gap between the lively discussion on the phenomenon of cultural hybridization in cultural anthropology and the reality of methodological approaches in archaeological interpretation. The diversity of human interaction and the hybridization processes connected therewith, on the one hand, and the fragmentary and silent character of archaeological source material on the other have been seen as insuperable obstacles to the translation of this concept into a practical method for archaeology. In my contribution, I shall attempt to overcome these barriers by breaking down a complex anthropological discourse into components that may be useful for archaeological sources. My aim is to unravel hybridization processes, which I call processes of entanglement, into distinct stages and consider the potential of each stage to be materialized in the archaeological record. I shall further attempt to distinguish between the entanglement of objects and the entanglement of social practices, because foreign, but in their materiality still unchanged, objects can be used in already entangled social practices. Subsequently, I shall examine what stage of the process of entanglement has given rise to an entangled object or social practice. Finally, the application of the concept of hybridization in recent studies on the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean will be reviewed and my own approach demonstrated on the basis of a case study.
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