Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SKILL (Individual Variations and Cultural Evolution: The pottery wheel-throwing skill as a case study)
Période du rapport: 2018-10-01 au 2020-09-30
While the apprenticeship of craft skills is to be understood as a socially mediated individual learning, the ensuing prediction of individual and cultural marking within craft communities – in both the craftsmen motor skills and the ensuing artifacts – has not been addressed. The first objective of the SKILL project was to fill up this gap by measuring the motor skills variations among members of pottery-making communities. The second objective was to measure the vessel shapes variations among craftsmen in those communities. A related question concerns the perception by the craftsmen of these vessel shapes variations. If craftsmen identify the slight differences characterizing the vessels produced by distinct members of their community, they could thus select the individual variant they prefer, and disseminate it by reproduction. The third objective of the SKILL project was to test this premise. In the SKILL project I bring an experimental approach to explore these issues, with the aim of providing an assessment of (i) the variations of motor skill occurring through cultural transmission, (ii) the variations in the ensuing vessel shapes and (iii) the perception of the vessel shapes variations by the craftsmen.
The main results of the SKILL project show for the first time how much culture can influence craft skills and why imitation alone is not sufficient to explain the development of complex motor skills. Results highlight the joint effects of cultural, transcultural and individual features in the hand positions (repertoire and sequence) used by potters. Moreover, individual-specific features were documented in the fashioning patterns of the vessels, even though these vessels were culturally standardized. This provides evidence that the potters’ skills are imprinted by the cultural context where they have been learnt, however their skills are not fully determined by a cultural model copied during the learning. The findings suggest that archaeologists should bear in mind that artifacts falling into homogeneous geometrical types are not produced by culturally standardized manufacturing patterns but by behaviours containing both cultural and individual features. More broadly, I assume that the pool of individual variants in any complex motor skill constitute a source of diversity, for both material and nonmaterial end results. In the field of educational psychology, these studies help to better understand the role of social models on motor learning. Asking learners to copy elders’ skill can be helpful only if this instruction is presented to learners as a support to discover by themselves an efficient motor skill.
The main results of the SKILL project show for the first time how much culture can influence craft skills and why imitation alone is not sufficient to explain the development of complex motor skills. Results highlight the joint effects of cultural, transcultural and individual features in the hand positions (repertoire and sequence) used by potters. Moreover, individual-specific features were documented in the fashioning patterns of the vessels, even though these vessels were culturally standardized. This provides evidence that the potters’ skills are imprinted by the cultural context where they have been learnt, however their skills are not fully determined by a cultural model copied during the learning. The findings suggest that archaeologists should bear in mind that artifacts falling into homogeneous geometrical types are not produced by culturally standardized manufacturing patterns but by behaviours containing both cultural and individual features. More broadly, I assume that the pool of individual variants in any complex motor skill constitute a source of diversity, for both material and nonmaterial end results. In the field of educational psychology, these studies help to better understand the role of social models on motor learning. Asking learners to copy elders’ skill can be helpful only if this instruction is presented to learners as a support to discover by themselves an efficient motor skill.
I follow an ethno-archaeological approach in the SKILL project, because experimenting with contemporary craftsmen is the only way to provide direct evidence regarding the existence of individual features on artifacts. In collaboration with James Steele and John Endler, I developed methods to analyse both the behaviour (hand positions) and its material consequences (vessel). These methods were borrowed from ethology (behavior analysis software BORIS) and biology (Elliptical Fourier shape description), they provide an accurate quantification of variation within and among potters allowing statistical test of theoretical hypotheses. My dataset encompassed data collected in four cultural groups: Indian Prajapati, Indian Multani-Kumhar, Nepalese, and Palestinian. The Palestinian data were collected in Hebron during the project, though a field experiment with 26 potters belonging to three families. As a long-standing crafting tradition, the pottery-making community of Hebron represents a privileged case study. The project provided me training-through-research, I have also completed my professional expertise through three trainings in statistics and three trainings in communication.
The results and methods of the SKILL project have been exploited and disseminated through three articles, two press releases, two scientific seminars, one teaching workshop, one statistics tutorial, and one photography exhibition. The scientific articles have been published in high quality international peer-reviewed journals: Journal of Anthropological Archaeology (one article) and PLoS ONE (two articles). The two articles published in PLoS ONE have been covered by the media with two press releases, one available on the Kobe University website, and the second on Science Daily website. One seminar was presented at the UCL Institute of Archaeology (London) and another one at the Archaeology department of the Hebrew University (Jerusalem). The teaching workshop was designed for the master students of the UCL Institute of Archaeology (London). It has been organized with the collaboration of the Ceramic Technology Network (co-ordinator Dr. Patrick Quinn). This workshop was a privileged opportunity to share with the students and the network members my ethnographical knowledge (on the various pottery-making communities I visited from Europe to Asia) and to introduce them to the theoretical and methodological approaches developed in the SKILL project. The statistics tutorial (constituted by three Word documents and six Excel data files) presents the basics in RStudio programming language to undertake a variety of essential statistical analyses which are often poorly understand by students and scholars. This tutorial has been shared with students and scholars in archaeology from different locations (London, Jerusalem, Kyushu, Paris and Marseille). The photography exhibition was presented in a public display space in London (UCL South Cloisters, Bloomsbury area). It consisted in 18 images (printed in A1 panels) capturing the cultural transmission process and the people involved. The photographs came from studies in (1) Nepal, Bhaktapur, Kathmandu district, (2) Thailand, Muangkung, Chan Mai district, and (3) Palestinian territories, Hebron. The daily craftmanship activities – run by potters of several generations – were illustrated through different steps of pottery production. Through these different actions, this original project will contribute to renew the scientific debate and help overcome some theoretical dead ends. This will notably i) complement existing work on pottery and on craft specialization at the UCL Institute of Archaeology and ii) enhance communication between archaeology, ethnology, and movement sciences both at European and international scales.
The results and methods of the SKILL project have been exploited and disseminated through three articles, two press releases, two scientific seminars, one teaching workshop, one statistics tutorial, and one photography exhibition. The scientific articles have been published in high quality international peer-reviewed journals: Journal of Anthropological Archaeology (one article) and PLoS ONE (two articles). The two articles published in PLoS ONE have been covered by the media with two press releases, one available on the Kobe University website, and the second on Science Daily website. One seminar was presented at the UCL Institute of Archaeology (London) and another one at the Archaeology department of the Hebrew University (Jerusalem). The teaching workshop was designed for the master students of the UCL Institute of Archaeology (London). It has been organized with the collaboration of the Ceramic Technology Network (co-ordinator Dr. Patrick Quinn). This workshop was a privileged opportunity to share with the students and the network members my ethnographical knowledge (on the various pottery-making communities I visited from Europe to Asia) and to introduce them to the theoretical and methodological approaches developed in the SKILL project. The statistics tutorial (constituted by three Word documents and six Excel data files) presents the basics in RStudio programming language to undertake a variety of essential statistical analyses which are often poorly understand by students and scholars. This tutorial has been shared with students and scholars in archaeology from different locations (London, Jerusalem, Kyushu, Paris and Marseille). The photography exhibition was presented in a public display space in London (UCL South Cloisters, Bloomsbury area). It consisted in 18 images (printed in A1 panels) capturing the cultural transmission process and the people involved. The photographs came from studies in (1) Nepal, Bhaktapur, Kathmandu district, (2) Thailand, Muangkung, Chan Mai district, and (3) Palestinian territories, Hebron. The daily craftmanship activities – run by potters of several generations – were illustrated through different steps of pottery production. Through these different actions, this original project will contribute to renew the scientific debate and help overcome some theoretical dead ends. This will notably i) complement existing work on pottery and on craft specialization at the UCL Institute of Archaeology and ii) enhance communication between archaeology, ethnology, and movement sciences both at European and international scales.
The plan for exploitation and dissemination of results of the SKILL project has been adapted with the addition of two scientific peer-reviewed articles. One has been accepted (in Journal of Archaeology: Reports) in December 2020 and is currently under revision, the second one has been submitted (to Journal of Anthropological Archaeology) in December 2020 and is currently under review.