Keramik jenseits von 'Kulturen'. Mobilität, Verflechtungen und Transformationen im nördlichen Alpenvorland (3950–3800 v.Chr.)

Heitz, Caroline (2023). Keramik jenseits von 'Kulturen'. Mobilität, Verflechtungen und Transformationen im nördlichen Alpenvorland (3950–3800 v.Chr.). Open Series in Prehistoric Archaeology (OSPA): Vol. 3. Leiden: Sidestone Press 10.5281/zenodo.7408967

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Mobility is fundamental to forms of social configurations. But what role did spatial mobility play in the past? Regarding prehistoric periods, such as the Neolithic, we still do know little about this. That also applies to the settlement areas of the northern Alpine Foreland. The wetland settlements there were labelled UNESCO World Heritage in 2011. With their excellently preserved remains in lakes and bogs they provide a unique research basis. The dendrochronologically dated settlements open a rare possibility to approach cultural, social, and economic processes based on a high temporal and spatial resolution. In the present volume, this is achieved based on pottery from contemporaneously dated settlements on Lake Zurich and Lake Constance from the period between 3950 and 3800 BC.

Process philosophical considerations on the (trans)formation of ‘things’ are combined with relational social theoretical concepts such as the habitus theorem to form a praxeological approach. The latter serves as the epistemological basis of the newly elaborated mixed method research methodology, which allows for a deeper understanding of mobility, social relations and configurations as well as transformations. Qualitative methods (classification of vessel designs) is utilised to understand pottery production practices from the perspective of the makers and quantitative methods (cluster analysis of vessel features) can be used to analyse transregional structures of ceramic consumption. Accordingly, patterns of spatial mobility and far-reaching relationships of settlement communities become apparent based on such material entanglements. Mobility-related appropriation phenomena and change in pottery practices can be approached in the rhythm of individual decades. Furthermore, the combination of a subjectivist with an ‘objectified’ stance during the research process based on Pierre Bourdieu’s epistemology, the praxeology, leads to an epistemological, metamodern ‘third way’ that mediates between the realism of modernity (processual archaeology) and the constructivism of postmodernity (post-processual archaeology). Finally, the research results deconstruct the common social models following the cultural-historical paradigm, which conceptualized ‘cultures’ as supposedly static, homogeneous, spatially distinct entities. Instead, the pottery points to translocal social configurations that related settlements in the northern Alpine Foreland with each other in the 4th millennium BC.

Item Type:

Book (Monograph)

Division/Institute:

06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of History and Archaeology > Institute of Archaeological Sciences
10 Strategic Research Centers > Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR)
06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of History and Archaeology > Institute of Archaeological Sciences > Pre- and Early History

UniBE Contributor:

Heitz, Caroline Franziska

Subjects:

900 History > 930 History of ancient world (to ca. 499)

ISBN:

9789464280456

Series:

Open Series in Prehistoric Archaeology (OSPA)

Publisher:

Sidestone Press

Funders:

[42] Schweizerischer Nationalfonds

Projects:

[UNSPECIFIED] Mobilities, entanglements and transformations in Neolithic societies on the Swiss Plateau (3900-3500 BC)

Language:

German

Submitter:

Caroline Franziska Heitz

Date Deposited:

05 May 2023 12:34

Last Modified:

30 May 2023 07:12

Publisher DOI:

10.5281/zenodo.7408967

Uncontrolled Keywords:

ceramics; mobility; transformation; habitus; praxeology; reflexive archaeology; classification; mixed method research; prehistoric lakeside settlements; neolithic; UNESCO worldheritage

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/182309

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