Towards an archaeology of pedagogy: learning, teaching and the generation of material culture traditions

Abstract

In this article we seek to build on efforts to apply the insights of social learning theory to interpret patterns of continuity and change in the archaeological record. This literature suggests that stable and often highly arbitrary material culture traditions are likely to be founded on our biologically evolved capacity for imitation. However, it has recently been argued that the latter may be insufficient to explain the long-term maintenance of complex and difficult-to-master skills, such as those required to produce stone tools, pots, textiles and other cognitively opaque cultural forms. To ensure that these skills are accurately transferred to the next generation, adults must actively guide and control the learning activities of their children, a mode of transmission that can be labelled ‘pedagogy’. The importance of pedagogy has often been overlooked in the theoretical and empirical literature on craft learning, a fact that can probably be attributed to an unnecessarily narrow conception of teaching that equates it with explicit linguistic instruction. Using ethnographic data gathered from detailed case studies, we characterize pedagogy in the context of craft apprenticeships as involving the gradual scaffolding of skill in a novice through demonstration, intervention and collaboration. Although these processes cannot be directly observed in the archaeological record, they can sometimes be inferred through the detailed reconstruction of operational chains in past technologies. The evidence we present suggests that pedagogy has played an essential role in securing the faithful transmission of skills across generations, and should be regarded as the central mechanism through which long-term and stable material culture traditions are propagated and maintained.

Keywords:

• Cultural transmission
• tradition
• pedagogy
• teaching
• apprenticeships
• chaîne opèratoire

Acknowledgements

JT and FR were supported by fellowships sponsored by the Research Councils UK and British Academy respectively during the writing of this article, while aspects of the ethnographic research that we report in the ‘Theories of pedagogy’ section were funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, Wenner Gren Foundation, Royal Anthropological Institute and University College London Graduate School. We wish to thank Jan Apel, Rachel Kendal and an anonymous reviewer for their feedback on earlier drafts of this article, as well as Mark Collard, Alex Bentley, Stephen Shennan and our other colleagues at the Department of Anthropology at Durham, Institute of Archaeology at UCL and the AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity for providing us with a constant source of support and stimulation.