Kalinga ethnoarchaeology

de William A. Longacre, James M. Skibo

Based on twenty years of research in the highlands of the northern Philippines and constituting one of the best-known projects in the field, Kalinga Ethnoarchaeology examines the contemporary pottery and basketry of several small Kalinga villages, revealing how a traditional tribal group makes, distributes, uses, breaks, and discards their ceramics and how pottery and other material culture relate to human behavior. The book's contributors approach a single body of ceramic data from many different angles, encompassing both traditional concerns and developing trends in village ethnoarchaeology. Addressing fundamental questions of archaeological method and theory, the essays discuss why there is or is not a correlation between material and social boundaries, how pottery use can be inferred from use-alterations, why more pots break in larger households, what relationships exist between household wealth and material possessions, how a pottery distribution system works, and how and why technological change occurs. Providing tangible links between material culture and human behavior and organization, Kalinga Ethnoarchaeology will prove invaluable to prehistorians reconstructing past behavior from material remains.