The Archaeology of Personhood: An Anthropological Approach

“…the capacity of human actionwas locatedwithin awider set of social relationships and the notion of the self as an autonomous agentwas very limited (Aranda Jiménez, 2015; Aranda Jiménez, Montón-Subias, & Sánchez Romero, 2015b; Brück, 2004; Budja, 2012; Fowler, 2004; Hernando, 2002, 2012).”

“As mentioned above, studies of personhood in archaeology have begun to explore ‘relational identities’ (Brück, 2005; Fowler, 2001, 2004; Giles, 2008a), whereby human subjectivities are intimately entwined with other people, objects and animals.”

“…of boundaries’ (Quested & Rudge, 2003, p. 558) between inside and outside also challenges modern Western concepts of personhood, in which the intact, bounded, physical body is central to the perception of ourselves as individuals (cf. Fowler, 2004; Robb & Harris, 2013; Turner, 1992, p. 21).”

“3An approach finding parallels in studies of relational personhood (see Fowler 2004).”

“…self-awareness as author of their own social conduct and of the social forms in which they participate, (Cohen 1994), and cultural materials (Fowler 2004) have been theorized to organize and internalize interpersonal experience within a universal and culturally accepted structure (Ewing…”

“…status and identity in life, that relationship has now been questioned by concepts of the ‘dividual’ and ‘distributed personhood’ (e.g. Brück 2004; 2019; Fowler 2004) and a generally more critical consideration of people’s motivations for having included any objects in a grave (e.g. Barrett 1988;…”

“In these contexts, the body is understood as permeable (changed by the flow, in and out, of different substances) or partible (changed by the removal or addition of parts of the person—where material culture is also understood as part of persons) (see Fowler 2004 for an account of these concepts).”

“Yet elsewhere, for example inMadagascar, houses are considered to be ‘persons’ in their own right (Fowler 2004, 110–111) and there are ritual actions surrounding house building and maintenance that incorporate this perspective.”

“Therefore, bodies and objects in a burial are part of a common material assemblage and their materiality does not differentiate one from the other (Brück 2001; Fowler 2004).”

“Indeed Fowler has explored the extension of self into others in small scale societies in depth (Fowler 2004) with complimentary concepts found in discussions of the evolutionary development of emotional investments and compassion for other s wellbeing (Spikins in press, Spikins and Rutherford in…”

“This particular situation could have influenced prehistoric peoples’ perception of bone objects in general (cf. Fowler, 2004: 137; Conneller, 2011) and of fishhooks in particular.”

“This view of selfhood as including possessions accords with archaeological reck-oning as well Fowler (2004), except that there is seen to be a shift in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from thinking of the self as merging with objects to thinking of the self as dominating separable objects.”

“Here too, the self is the sum of relations with others (Fowler, 2004), but these relations and gifts are likely absorbed in the manner of Self Expansion (Connell & Schau, 2013) or ‘inclusion of the other in the self’ (Aron et al., 1991, 1992).”

“In this sense, wampum’s circulation from personal to collective bodies was not only an expression of collectivity, but simultaneously crucial to the relational definition of a conjoint or ‘fractal’ subject (Fowler 2004; Wagner 1991).”

“…a strong sense of group belonging and more relationality than individualization (Durkheim 1933:130; Goody and Watt 1963:339,344) as the mainmechanism to construct identity in the absence of a conceptual split, not only between body and mind, but also between body and person (Ong 2002; Fowler 2004).”

“It has become a general-purpose account of ritual (e.g., Fogelin and Schiffer 2015; Fowler 2004; Garwood 2011), diverting attention away from other potentially better explanations.”

“This is a realisation that has emerged from discussions of ‘personhood’ in archaeology (e.g. Brück 2004, Fowler 2004, 2016), which have also given rise to the recognition that agency, or power, within such relations lies with ideas, things or places as well as with people.”

“Thereby, through the practice of gift exchange various qualities or parts of the person are distributed among the members of the society leading to multiply-authored people (Fowler 2004, p. 26).”

“Daggers may therefore, according to the circumstance, have been used to define a particular type of social identity or ‘personhood’ (Fowler 2004, 73–6), and relationships between people, or have been included because they contained properties, which were necessary to ensure the success of the…”

“…of the meaning of girdle-hangers are understood as (a) cumulating by people’s continuous engagement with this meaning at all stages of the artefacts’ lifecycle, in manufacture, use, repair and discard (cf. Fowler 2004: 65); and (b) created in people’s exchange of ideas in ongoing daily discourse.”

“9 Fowler 2004; Köpke and Batten 2005; Graham 2009; Eckardt 2010.”

“Since ornaments are key elements for highlighting aspects of the personhood of individuals (Fowler, 2004), they reveal the multiform ways in which past peoples paid attention to their appearance and adorned themselves to stress their identity and to attract the social attention of others.”

“In the main this has resulted from developments in archaeology and related disciplines, such as anthropology, geography, history and sociology, which have refined thinking on the body, bodily engagement and sensory experience (Csordas 1990, 1994; Fowler 2004; Gosden 2001; Hamilakis et al. 2002; Lakoff and Johnson 1999…”

“Yet other authors forcefully contested both readings, noting that interpretations of this kind are predicated upon unspoken modernist assumptions regarding gender, value, and personhood (Brück 2004; Brück and Fontijn 2013; Fowler 2004, 2013).”

“…practices remained elusive until a comparison with crosscultural examples (Vitelli 2011) produces the notion of transformational "lubrication": bodily essences such as tears and saliva are commonly noted as used to unite, heal, and renew (Fowler 2004:103; Ingold 2000:132; Meskell 1999:47).”

“It often entails larger tensions between individuals, the group, and the state (fowler 2004, Meskell 2007).”

“Personhood comprises the specific and dynamic beliefs of dividual and individual notions of being a person (Fowler 2004, 2016; Sinclair 2020).”

“…– ‘Darwinism’, ‘Marxism’, ‘structuralism’, ‘agency’, ‘phenomenology’, ‘personhood’, ‘dwelling’, ‘materiality’ and ‘entanglement’ – but, with few exceptions (e.g. Fowler 2004; Johnson 2002; Gilchrist 2013; Poole 2013; Robb and Harris 2013), elemental and humoral philosophy are rarely…”

“…often at significant spatial locations, and it is suggested that ‘they were the “anvil” on which other bodies were broken, reworked and recycled’ (Fowler, 2004: 41), while others were deliberately broken and burnt for incorporation into ritualized acts of commensality before abandonment…”

“It may have been regarded as generative or transformative to prehistoric and medieval people, with its incorporation in mortuary and pilgrimage contexts conveying the symbolism of water and new beginnings (Fowler 2004: 116; Lash 2018).”

“Their association would serve to underlie a world-view based on the construction of the self in a more fluid way, in which the person is recognized as composite and multiple-authored (Chapman, 2000; Hernando Gonzalo, 2002; Brück, 2004; Fowler, 2004; Budja, 2010; for discussions related to southern Iberian ditched encl…”

“I argue that the incomplete inclusion of children in community cemeteries relies on their nature as not fully socialized beings, putting a major emphasis on personhood (Fowler 2004).”

“Accordingly, by circulating these items, the communities not only circulated goods or prestige items but also created powerful links between people and places (e.g. Baysal, 2019; Bradley, 2000; Fowler, 2004; Martínez-Sevilla, 2019; Morton et al., 2019; Nyland, 2021).”

“It has been argued that the logic of personhood was constantly altered and reflected upon by the circulation and re-contextualization of various body parts (Fowler 2004, p. 99).”

“Further, research problems relating to age and assignation of personhood (see Fowler, 2004), as well as gender, can benefit from such insights.”