Michael Brian Schiffer – författare

The study of the human-made world, whether it is called artifacts, material culture, or technology, has burgeoned across the academy. This book is an attempt by practitioners of one program – Behavioral Archaeology – to furnish between two covers some of our basic principles, heuristic tools, and illustrative case studies.

The study of the human-made world, whether it is called artifacts, material culture, or technology, has burgeoned across the academy. This book is an attempt by practitioners of one program – Behavioral Archaeology – to furnish between two covers some of our basic principles, heuristic tools, and illustrative case studies.

In this ground-breaking work, the distinguished anthropological theorist, Michael Brian Schiffer, presents a profound challenge to the social sciences. Through a broad range of examples, he demonstrates how theories of behaviour and communication have too often ignored the fundamental importance of objects in human life.In The Material Life of Human Beings, the author builds upon the premise that the most important feature of human life is not language but the relationships which take place between people and objects. The author shows that artifacts are involved in all modes of human communication - be they visual, auditory or tactile. By creatively folding elements of postmodernist thought into a scientific framework, he creates new concepts and models for understanding and analysing communication and behavior. Challenging established theories within the social sciences, Michael Brian Schiffer offers a reassessment of the centrality of materiality to everyday life.

Most of us know - at least we've heard - that Benjamin Franklin conducted some kind of electrical experiment with a kite. What few of us realize - and what this book makes powerfully clear - is that Franklin played a major role in laying the foundations of modern electrical science and technology. This fast-paced book, rich with historical details and anecdotes, brings to life Franklin, the large international network of scientists and inventors in which he played a key role, and their amazing inventions. We learn what these early electrical devices - from lights and motors to musical and medical instruments - looked like, how they worked, and what their utilitarian and symbolic meanings were for those who invented and used them. Against the fascinating panorama of life in the eighteenth century, Michael Brian Schiffer tells the story of the very beginnings of our modern electrical world. The earliest electrical technologies were conceived in the laboratory apparatus of physicists; because of their surprising and diverse effects, however, these technologies rapidly made their way into many other communities and activities.Schiffer conducts us from community to community, showing how these technologies worked as they were put to use in public lectures, revolutionary experiments in chemistry and biology, and medical therapy. This story brings to light the arcane and long-forgotten inventions that made way for many modern technologies - including lightning rods (Franklin's invention), cardiac stimulation, xerography, and the internal combustion engine - and richly conveys the complex relationships among science, technology, and culture.

As an artifact of culture, the portable radio is an unusual but perfect subject for investigation by archaeologist Schiffer. Seeing the history of everyday objects as the history of the life of a people, he shows how the portable radio has reflected changes in American society as surely as clay pots have for ancient cultures.

These fourteen original essays accept a dual premise: technology pervades and is embedded in all human activities. By taking that approach, studies of technology address two questions central in anthropological and archaeological research today-accounting for variability and change. These diverse yet interrelated chapters show that to understand human lives, researchers must deal with the material world that all peoples create and inhabit. Therefore an anthropology of technology is not a separate, discrete inquiry; instead, it is a way to connect how people make and use things to any activity studied, ranging from religion, to enculturation, to communication, to art.Each contributor discusses theories and methods and also offers a substantial case study. These detailed inquiries span human societies from the Paleolithic to the computer age. By moving beyond the usual approach of examining ancient technologies, particularly chipped stone and low-fired ceramics, this volume probes for the construction of meaning in the material world across millennia. The authors of these essays find technology to be an inclusive and flexible topic that merges with studies of everything else in human activity.

Behavioral archaeology is an emerging branch of anthropology emphasizing the study of relationships between human behavior and artifacts (material culture) in all times and places. As such, it aspires to make contributions beyond the confines of archaeology to other behavioral sciences and to society in general. Behavioral Archaeology is a selection of writings by Michael Schiffer, one of the field's primary proponents. The chapters include important works published between 1972 and 1987, the formative period of behavioral archaeology. Schiffer has crafted a lengthy introduction to the coume, a personal history that contextualizes the development of these works. Also new is the last chapter, which lists - and keys to the preceding chapters - the field's most important principles, tenets, and premises. Readers will discover that although behavioral archaeologist have put archaeological inference on a scientific footing and have fostered the growth of experimental archaeology and ethnoarchaeology as research strategies, behavioral archaeology is not confined to methodology. Indeed, cultivation of the fields established here is leading to the development of new behavioral science focused on studies of people-artifact interactions. By closely juxtaposing method and theory, principles and applications, science and history, this book illustrates the coherence and scope of behavioral archaeology's conceptual framework.

This handbook synthesizes the most important principles of cultural and environmental formation processes for both students and practicing archaeologists. Formation Process of the Archaeological Record embodies a vision that the cultural past is knowable, but only when the nature of the evidence is thoroughly understood. It shows how the past is accessible in practice by identifying variability introduced by the diverse effects of people and nature that in some sum, form the archaeological record. For students, it is intended as both an introduction and guide in method and theory, field work, and analysis. Practicing archaeologists will find it a valuable checklist of sources of variability when observations on the archaeological record are used to justify inferences.

Originally published by Academic Press in 1976, this book has become a foundational statement in archaeological methodology and has had a lasting impact on the discipline. As Michael Schiffer writes in his new prologue, the work 'played a vital role in establishing as fundamental the behavioral perspective in archaeology.' (Must be distinguished from the collection of articles by Schiffer published by University of Utah Press called Behavioral Archaeology: First Principles.) From the Prologue to the Percheron Press Edition: 'Clearly many issues raised in Behavioral Archeology, as well as its principal ideas, retain considerable relevance for the practice of archaeology. Thus I present this reprinted edition of Behavioral Archeology, warts and all, in the hope that readers will enjoy engaging the ideas that played a pivotal role in establishing as fundamental the behavioral perspective in archaeology.'

Many technologies begin life as someone's vision of an ambitious, perhaps audacious, technology that is expected to have a revolutionary impact on consumers-whether families, companies, or societies. However, if this highly touted technology fails 'prematurely' at some point in its life history, it becomes a spectacular flop.Employing a behavioral perspective, this book presents a sample of twelve spectacular flops encompassing the past three centuries-ranging from the world's first automobile to the nuclear-powered bomber. Because technologies may fail from many different causes, spectacular flops pose a special challenge to the author's long-term project of furnishing generalizations about technological change.Instead of constructing generalizations that apply to all spectacular flops, this book provides limited generalizations that pertain to particular groups of technologies bounded by parameters such as 'long-term development projects' and 'one-off projects.' The reader need have no prior familiarity with the technologies because basic principles are introduced as needed.

Studying Technological Change synthesizes nearly four decades of research by Michael Brian Schiffer, a cofounder of the field of behavioral archaeology. This new book asks historical and scientific questions about the interaction of people with artifacts during all times and in all places. The book is not about the history or prehistory of technology, nor is it a catalog of methods and techniques for inferring how specific technologies were made or used. Rather, it supplies conceptual tools that can be used to help craft an explanation of any technological change in any society. The behavioral approach leads to new questions, creative research employing diverse lines of evidence, and, often, counterintuitive explanations. In behavioral archaeology, one never loses sight of the materiality of human behavior. Needless to say, advocates of other research approaches will find much in this book to dispute. But critics cannot gainsay the productivity of the behavioral approach nor the fact that it has furnished fresh insights into episodes of technological change.

What is the social value of archaeological research to present-day society? Michael Schiffer answers this question with forty-three case studies from a global perspective to demonstrate archaeology’s diverse scientific and humanistic contributions. Drawing on nearly five decades of research, he delivers fascinating yet nontechnical discussions that provide a deeper understanding of what archaeologists do and why they do it.From reconstructing human evolution and behavior in prehistoric times to providing evidence that complements recorded history or debunks common legends, archaeologists help us understand our human past. They have also played crucial roles in developing techniques essential for the investigation of climate change along with tools for environmental reconstruction. Working for cities, tribes, and federal agencies, archaeologists manage cultural resources and testify in court. In forensic contexts, archaeological expertise enables the gathering of critical evidence.With engaging and lively prose, Archaeology’s Footprints brings to life a full panorama of contributions that have had an impact on modern society.

Although all archaeologists subscribe in principle to building strong cases in support of their inferences, behavioural archaeology alone has created methodology for developing strong cases in practice. The behavioural version of the strong case approach rests on two main pillars: (1) nomothetic (generalising) strategies, consisting of research in experimental archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, and long-term processes of behavioural change to produce principles necessary for inference; and (2) the formation processes of supporting evidence when constructing inferences. The chapters employ a wide range of data classes, demonstrating the versatility and productivity of the approach for fashioning rigorous inferences in history, historical archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, and prehistory. By illustrating the strong case approach with convincing case studies from behavioural archaeology, the editors aim to alert the archaeological community about how the process of archaeological inference can be improved.

This manual pulls together—and illustrates with interesting case studies—the variety of specialized and generalized archaeological research strategies that yield new insights into science. Throughout the book there are templates, consisting of questions, to help readers visualize and design their own projects. The manual seeks to be as general as possible, applicable to any society, and so science is defined as the creation of useful knowledge—the kinds of knowledge that enable people to make predictions. The chapters in Part I discuss the scope of the archaeology of science and furnish a conceptual foundation for the remainder of the book. Next, Part II presents several specialized, but widely practiced, research strategies that contribute to the archaeology of science. In order to thoroughly ground the manual in real-life applications, Part III presents lengthy case studies that feature the use of historical and archaeological evidence in the study of scientific activities.

This manual pulls together—and illustrates with interesting case studies—the variety of specialized and generalized archaeological research strategies that yield new insights into science. Throughout the book there are templates, consisting of questions, to help readers visualize and design their own projects. The manual seeks to be as general as possible, applicable to any society, and so science is defined as the creation of useful knowledge—the kinds of knowledge that enable people to make predictions. The chapters in Part I discuss the scope of the archaeology of science and furnish a conceptual foundation for the remainder of the book. Next, Part II presents several specialized, but widely practiced, research strategies that contribute to the archaeology of science. In order to thoroughly ground the manual in real-life applications, Part III presents lengthy case studies that feature the use of historical and archaeological evidence in the study of scientific activities.