Periodic Reporting for period 2 - REVERSEACTION (Reverse engineering collective action: complex technologies in stateless societies)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2023-04-01 al 2024-09-30
Cooperation is a markedly human mix of innate and learned behaviour, and a key to tackling some of our greatest concerns. People of all kinds can collaborate voluntarily on collective and ambitious goals. Paradoxically, however, studies of social dynamics often focus on hierarchies, state formation and political structures ruled by coercive power, with comparatively little regard to the mechanisms whereby humans voluntarily collaborate.
Encouragingly, new research on collective action is heralding a fundamental transformation. With growing intensity, some scholars are analysing complex forms of social organisation that do not require states, capitalist market forces or other kinds of coercive hierarchies, and which cannot be neatly fitted into traditional historical narratives of ever-growing inequality.
Still, there is a perplexing lack of research on cooperation and collaboration in the production of luxury items, i.e. those materialising exceptional expense in materials and/or labour, and not geared towards subsistence. Implicitly, we are perpetuating the fallacy that complex technologies are the preserve of hierarchical societies with strong division of labour, as well as projecting an ethnocentric understanding of luxury.
REVERSEACTION aims to tackle an important question that has not been the target of research before: how can complex technological systems be sustained in the absence of coercive political administrations and capitalist market forces?
A core research approach to this aim is the reverse engineering of archaeological technologies, focusing primarily on the comparative study of two complex stateless societies of pre-Hispanic South America: Muisca and Nariño (~AD 400-1600). We are also developing studies of other archaeological societies in South America, Africa and Europe, as well as modern cooperatives. We deploy advanced archaeological science methods for the investigation of archaeological goldwork, ceramics, textiles and precious stones produced, traded and used in stateless societies, and foster exploratory collaborations with anthropology, sociology, management studies and various crafts.
Encouragingly, new research on collective action is heralding a fundamental transformation. With growing intensity, some scholars are analysing complex forms of social organisation that do not require states, capitalist market forces or other kinds of coercive hierarchies, and which cannot be neatly fitted into traditional historical narratives of ever-growing inequality.
Still, there is a perplexing lack of research on cooperation and collaboration in the production of luxury items, i.e. those materialising exceptional expense in materials and/or labour, and not geared towards subsistence. Implicitly, we are perpetuating the fallacy that complex technologies are the preserve of hierarchical societies with strong division of labour, as well as projecting an ethnocentric understanding of luxury.
REVERSEACTION aims to tackle an important question that has not been the target of research before: how can complex technological systems be sustained in the absence of coercive political administrations and capitalist market forces?
A core research approach to this aim is the reverse engineering of archaeological technologies, focusing primarily on the comparative study of two complex stateless societies of pre-Hispanic South America: Muisca and Nariño (~AD 400-1600). We are also developing studies of other archaeological societies in South America, Africa and Europe, as well as modern cooperatives. We deploy advanced archaeological science methods for the investigation of archaeological goldwork, ceramics, textiles and precious stones produced, traded and used in stateless societies, and foster exploratory collaborations with anthropology, sociology, management studies and various crafts.
Method developments
We have developed custom-made instrumental calibrations and methodological protocols to optimise the analysis of a variety of archaeological materials. These include specific calibrations for the analysis of gold, ceramics and emeralds by portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF), a protocol for the trace element analysis of goldwork by laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), a streamlined approach to 3D scanning and geometric morphometric analysis of ceramics, and advanced digital and scanning electron microscopy for textiles. These and other scientific methods are allowing us to characterise the shape, microstructure and elemental composition of the artefacts, in turn providing information about the raw materials and technological procedures employed in their manufacture. These methodological developments are useful for this project but also for others, and are beginning to be employed in other archaeological applications that are benefitting from our research.
Research activities
We have led numerous research expeditions to various archaeological sites, museums and other institutions, in Colombia and elsewhere, to carry out in-situ analysis employing portable equipment, and/or to obtain samples for more detailed analyses in Europe. All of our work is conducted in collaboration with local colleagues and institutions. Some highlights of our research results include the analyses of the full assemblage of gold objects recovered at the site of Nueva Esperanza in Colombia (the largest Muisca site ever excavated), which are for the first time anchored in a robust radiocarbon chronology; the investigation of materials from newly excavated tombs from the Nariño highlands in their context; and the analysis of hundreds of new assemblages and legacy samples of gold, ceramics and textiles from the Museo del Oro in Bogotá. As comparative materials, we have studied collections at the Ashmolean and Fitzwilliam Museums in the UK, and the Sissi Archaeological Project on Crete, and completed publications on case studies from Spain, Zimbabwe and Chile. All of this work is illustrating a variety of technological systems that can be sustained successfully for the production and use of luxury objects without the intervention of state authorities.
Communication and outputs
We have published five open access articles in peer-reviewed journals, and various others are under way. We have also developed a relational database to store and share all the data produced by the project. In addition, we have delivered conference presentations and public talks in six countries, and our work featured prominently in one TV documentary and two podcasts, in addition to thousands of social media interactions. We have also maintained intense exchange with our Advisory Board and a growing network of collaborators across the world, who are enriching the research with multiple complementary perspectives.
We have developed custom-made instrumental calibrations and methodological protocols to optimise the analysis of a variety of archaeological materials. These include specific calibrations for the analysis of gold, ceramics and emeralds by portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF), a protocol for the trace element analysis of goldwork by laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), a streamlined approach to 3D scanning and geometric morphometric analysis of ceramics, and advanced digital and scanning electron microscopy for textiles. These and other scientific methods are allowing us to characterise the shape, microstructure and elemental composition of the artefacts, in turn providing information about the raw materials and technological procedures employed in their manufacture. These methodological developments are useful for this project but also for others, and are beginning to be employed in other archaeological applications that are benefitting from our research.
Research activities
We have led numerous research expeditions to various archaeological sites, museums and other institutions, in Colombia and elsewhere, to carry out in-situ analysis employing portable equipment, and/or to obtain samples for more detailed analyses in Europe. All of our work is conducted in collaboration with local colleagues and institutions. Some highlights of our research results include the analyses of the full assemblage of gold objects recovered at the site of Nueva Esperanza in Colombia (the largest Muisca site ever excavated), which are for the first time anchored in a robust radiocarbon chronology; the investigation of materials from newly excavated tombs from the Nariño highlands in their context; and the analysis of hundreds of new assemblages and legacy samples of gold, ceramics and textiles from the Museo del Oro in Bogotá. As comparative materials, we have studied collections at the Ashmolean and Fitzwilliam Museums in the UK, and the Sissi Archaeological Project on Crete, and completed publications on case studies from Spain, Zimbabwe and Chile. All of this work is illustrating a variety of technological systems that can be sustained successfully for the production and use of luxury objects without the intervention of state authorities.
Communication and outputs
We have published five open access articles in peer-reviewed journals, and various others are under way. We have also developed a relational database to store and share all the data produced by the project. In addition, we have delivered conference presentations and public talks in six countries, and our work featured prominently in one TV documentary and two podcasts, in addition to thousands of social media interactions. We have also maintained intense exchange with our Advisory Board and a growing network of collaborators across the world, who are enriching the research with multiple complementary perspectives.
REVERSEACTION is providing time-depth and methodological breadth to studies of collective action, at a time of global distrust of state structures and when cooperation at various scales is increasingly recognised as the solution to human needs. In revealing successful forms of complex technologies and shared luxuries in stateless societies, the project is challenging established assumptions about the history of social organisation and political economy, and offering inspiration for modern ventures. Furthermore, our redefinition of luxury as something that can unite rather than separate people has significant implications for archaeology, anthropology and sociology.
We are consolidating the reverse engineering of archaeological artefacts as a robust approach to ancient sociotechnical systems, and providing methodological pathways for its application in other contexts. We anticipate that, by the end of the project, we will accomplish the most comprehensive science-based investigation of pre-Hispanic material culture in Colombia to date, and model studies of knowledge exchange, community cooperation and theory-grounded archaeological science.
We are consolidating the reverse engineering of archaeological artefacts as a robust approach to ancient sociotechnical systems, and providing methodological pathways for its application in other contexts. We anticipate that, by the end of the project, we will accomplish the most comprehensive science-based investigation of pre-Hispanic material culture in Colombia to date, and model studies of knowledge exchange, community cooperation and theory-grounded archaeological science.