Constellations of knowledge: human agency and material affordance in lithic technology

Abstract

In recent years the conceptual and real link between technology and social action has been coherently drawn. Many authors have already noted that technology is not simply a body of explicitly formulated and objectively described knowledge (Dobres 1995; Dobres and Hoffman 1994; Edmonds 1995; Ingold 1990; Pfaffenberger 1988; Schmidt 1997; Sigaut 1994; Spector 1991, among many others). It is a suite of technical gestures and knowledge that is learned and expressed by individuals in the course of social practices. Technology is one of the social processes by which individuals negotiate and define their identities, in terms of gender, age, belief, class, and so on. Sometimes these actions may be explicitly formulated; more often than not they are habitual and tacit. In its very essence, therefore, technical action parallels social action, and should be understood as social agency.

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