Technology and Society Studies

Technologies are the visible remains of past human action.  In early societies they reflect on familiar topics, regarding consumption (technologies and materials as “things”), craft production and social identity, gender and class, social agency and technological choice.  To these more familiar ways of viewing technologies, there are non-material resources into which humans intrude their technologies, such as landscapes, agriculture and animal husbandry.  My research focuses on weaving and ceramics to provide insights into economies and social relations in the past.  There are no cultural boundaries, either archaeological or ethnographic or textual, spatial or temporal or topical into which they intrude.  In my research, I focus on ceramics and weaving.  Ceramics are among the most durable remains and the subject of hands-on and analytical studies for discoveries of technique, exchange systems and craft specialization, while the fragmentary remains of woven cloth, the weaver’s tools, and texts are windows into divisions of labor and gender.