An Archaeology of Capitalism.

An Archaeology of Capitalism. Historical archaeology Historical archaeology is a branch of archaeology that concerns itself with "historical" societies, i.e. those that had systems of writing. It is often distinguished from prehistoric archaeology which studies societies with no writing. in North America North America,third largest continent (1990 est. pop. 365,000,000), c.9,400,000 sq mi (24,346,000 sq km), the northern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. and PostMedieval archaeologyin the UK are traditionally and notoriously conservative fields.Methodologically, most archaeologists who examine the material cultureof the recent past tend to focus on fetishized artefacts (particularlyceramics), refining chronologies and extending typologies while ignoringthe social dynamics Social dynamics is the study of the ability of a society to react to inner and outer changes and deal with its regulation mechanisms. Social dynamics is a mathematically inspired approach to analyse societies, building upon systems theory and sociology. which created and gave meaning to those artefacts.There have been few theoretical breakthroughs in recent years; whilethere are a few exceptions (notably feminists and hermeneuticians), mosthistorical/post-medieval archaeologists who express any theoreticaltendency generally fall into two camps: Marxists who study capitalism asa political economy (e.g. Leone 1988; 1995; McGuire 1992; Paynter 1989)and structuralists who associate changes in material culture withbroader patterns of social change (e.g. Deetz 1977; Glassie 1975;Yentsch 1991). Johnson's book is a welcome addition to the canon ofhistorical/post-medieval archaeology as it addresses capitalism, theusual fare of the Marxist camp, from a structuralist perspective.Johnson's first chapter charts out his programme for anarchaeology of capitalism. Recognizing the topic as too expansive for acomprehensive consideration in a single volume, Johnson limits hisanalysis to the processes (structures) of enclosure and commodification Commodification (or commoditization) is the transformation of what is normally a non-commodity into a commodity, or, in other words, to assign value. As the word commodity has distinct meanings in business and in Marxist theory, commodification in rural England between 1400 and 1750. He provides a concise definitionof archaeology as the study of all things physical; his archaeology ofcapitalism thus considers fragments of the material world oftenconsidered to be beyond the scope of traditional archaeologicalanalysis. In examining how the structure of everyday English societychanged during the transition from feudalism feudalism(fy`dəlĭzəm), form of political and social organization typical of Western Europe from the dissolution of Charlemagne's empire to the rise of the absolute monarchies. to capitalism, Johnsonpromises to analyse architecture, landscape, pottery and other materialgoods as active in the construction of social relations.Johnson's first substantive chapter is the volume's third,in which he defines enclosure as the 'replacement of medievalsystems of open fields and common farming practices with a private,hedged landscape' (p. 47). Johnson provides a typology typology/ty��pol��o��gy/ (ti-pol��ah-je) the study of types; the science of classifying, as bacteria according to type. typologythe study of types; the science of classifying, as bacteria according to type. of forms ofenclosure, followed by a discussion and critique of methods and theoriestraditionally used in historical analysis. This discussion builds to hismain point concerning the relevance of material culture to the study ofhistory; a point in which he reveals his structuralist ontology ontology:see metaphysics. ontologyTheory of being as such. It was originally called “first philosophy” by Aristotle. In the 18th century Christian Wolff contrasted ontology, or general metaphysics, with special metaphysical theories . Hestates that there is a way of writing about the past 'in which thestudy of material culture may be placed at centre-stage instead ofwaiting in the wings to be wheeled on; it does so by trying to workthrough different classes of evidence, looking for common pattern andstructure in different classes of material in a formal sense, acrosstraditional discursive boundaries' (p. 68). While he cites Foucaultas an influence for this approach to studying the past, he here revealshis intellectual debt to Jim Deetz (1977), whose primary legacy tohistorical archaeology is such an inclusive and structural approach tothe analysis of material culture.As did Deetz before him, Johnson links together observable changes inseveral classes of material cultural, viz. fields, houses and maps, bydefining them as physical manifestations of broader changes in culturalpractice. To this end, he defines enclosure as part of the broaderprocess of 'closure', literally the closing of spaces. Hebases the relationship between closing of traditional house forms to theenclosure of agricultural fields (and both to broader social phenomena)on the not unreasonable conclusions that 'the domestic and agrarianrealms were not so separate in the mentality of past worlds as they aretoday' (p. 83) and 'a recurrent feature of late medieval andearly modern mentalities was the lack of modern distinctions between thedomestic, the agricultural, and the political' (p. 86).An important point made by Johnson is that historical archaeologistsneed to extend the traditional definition of what is and what is not anartefact See artifact. ; thus archaeologists should consider documents and maps asartefacts. The very existence - as well as the structure - of theseartefacts is, Johnson argues, of at least equal importance to thespecific information contained within them. In considering them so,Johnson demonstrates that key elements of the emerging capitalistmentality (e.g. technologies of control and of defining the individual)can be read in the structure and content of a variety of materialsources, including such seemingly disparate things as county maps,church pews and probate inventories. As part of a mentality of socialand spatial control, such artefacts have a direct relationship to theprocess of field enclosure and of house closure.Johnson documents formal changes in the material culture of both theelite and the 'middling sort'. In dealing with the elite,Johnson convincingly argues that the shift to capitalism broughtstylistic changes manifested variously in the decoration and form ofgreat houses (castles and palaces) and controlled estate landscapes(deerparks and gardens). In dealing with the vernacular of the middlingsort he suggests that similar changes can be read not only in thefloor-plans of houses, but in shifting social relations between men andwomen, and master and servant An archaic generic legal phrase that is used to describe the relationship arising between an employer and an employee.A servant is anyone who works for another individual, the master, with or without pay. . In examining a range of artefact classesJohnson demonstrates how social and spatial segregation - the separationof humans and spaces were part and parcel of the rising eminence of theindividual over the collective during the shift to capitalism.In his final substantive chapter ('Thinking about Objects')Johnson seeks to demonstrate that the intrinsic meanings of materialculture changed with nascent capitalism through the processes ofcommodification, consumption and exchange. He suggests commodificationemerged as 'a new order or set of discursive rules governingconsumption of material good' (p. 192); he analyses several keyaspects of commodification, viz. a new stress on fashion, a rise inmaterialism, the emergence of advertising and marketing, the dominanceof cultural centralization and standardization. Johnson argues thatliteracy and commodification were entwined; literacy being 'tied into the changing social meanings of material culture' (p. 197). Herelates literacy to his earlier arguments on enclosure by arguing that'just as closure put new divides, fences, boundaries betweenfields, literacy put new divides between objects; allowed them to besorted and classified' (p. 197).An archaeology of capitalism is a fine theoretical synthesis; itreads much like a manifesto on how to theorize the��o��rize?v. the��o��rized, the��o��riz��ing, the��o��riz��esv.intr.To formulate theories or a theory; speculate.v.tr.To propose a theory about. the material changes thatoccurred in England in the early modern era. Johnson successfullyexplores the relationships between a changing social order and changesin elite and vernacular material culture. The volume's greatestcontribution is in providing a coherent framework for examining thethree classes of material culture most often analysed by post-medievalarchaeologists: houses, landscapes and portable artefacts. If the volumehas a weakness it is in demonstrating causality. Like manystructuralists and post-structuralists, Johnson contends that social,economic, and domestic phenomena are too closely entwined to beanalytically segregated, being part of a broader social phenomenon knownas 'mentality'. While demonstrating the myriad ways that theforms and meanings of material culture changed in the post-medievalworld, he takes as a given that the English 'mentality'changed in the early modern period. While he effectively documents thematerial evidence of this change, he does not offer a convincingexplanation as to why capitalism emerged and forged such changes. Thisno doubt is an artefact of what Johnson himself defines as the centralargument of the book, that the 'Georgian Order', so oftenperceived as having arrived as a complete package by American historicalarchaeologists, was in fact the result of several centuries of socialchange. While not a Marxist himself, Johnson may have been well servedto cite more closely the work of historical archaeologists from thiscamp whose working definitions of capitalism Capitalism is an economic system in which the capital is owned either by individuals or corporations. In such a system, the amount and type of development is typically limited by activities which support the accumulation and reinvestment of profits. seek to define the causesof such social and economic change (e.g. McGuire 1992; Paynter 1988).Nevertheless, An archaeology of capitalism is a bold and effectiveeffort at linking portable objects, landscapes, and houses to socialchange, and is a welcome addition to the literature.JAMES DELLE Department of Anthropology New York University New York University,mainly in New York City; coeducational; chartered 1831, opened 1832 as the Univ. of the City of New York, renamed 1896. 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