Página 52 - Pyrenae46-1

Gustavo G. Politis Reflections on Contemporary Ethnoarchaeology
50 PYRENAE, núm. 46 vol. 1 (2015)ISSN: 0079-8215 EISSN: 2339-9171 (p. 41-83)
Pétrequin (1984) can be included within this category, as well as the research made by
Coudart (1992) in New Guinea, and by David and Karlin in Siberia (2003). The final
approach is one that gives great importance to the anthropological thinking on the social
and cultural dimensions of the material culture. Again, the work on stone axes in New
Guinea performed by Pétrequin and Pétrequin (1993) is representative of this group, as
well as the work by Pierre Lemonnier (1992, 2012) and Oliver Gosselain (2000, 2008),
both representatives of the technique et culture school. These two researchers have made
significant contributions, especially the former, who described and contributed to the
understanding of the chaîne operatoire.
French ethnoarchaeologists have carried out some projects in Latin America, although
their impact is still limited and not comparable with the ones in Africa and Asia. The few
current examples include the recent study by archaeologist Claude Coutet (2011, 2014)
in Guyana, who reconstructed the chaîne operatoire of several pottery traditions based on
ethnoarchaeological research among two indigenous groups: the Ka’lina and the Palikur.
The work of Coutet is deeply influenced by Gosselain and is devoted not only to the
reconstruction of the chaîne operatoire, but also to the techno-stylistic characterization and
the searching for the source of pottery variability. Another ethnoarchaeological research
among the Palikur, includes study of their pottery tradition performed by van den Bel
(2009) and Rostain (2012). The latter also used the ethnoarchaeological information from
the Ashuar in order to interpret the archaeological record of the Upano Valley in Ecuador.
We should mention here an emergent ethnoarchaeological tradition from Spain,
although it does not yet have the impact of the previous ones (for a summary see García
Roselló, 2008: 34-43; and, for a relatively early theoretical discussion, see Onrubia Pintado,
1988). This trend includes several different lines, some of them with some commons traits
related to the “postcolonial critique”. One is developed by Alfredo González-Ruibal, who
is part of the Spanish research team in Ethiopia directed by Víctor Fernández Martínez
(2004). He developed original approaches, which would be placed in the previously men-
tioned “postcolonial critique”, based on his work not only in Ethiopia but also in abandoned
rural houses in Galicia (González-Ruibal, 2003), and, more recently, among the Awá from
Brazil (see below). He has argued that ethnoarchaeology, as conducted in the present with
the aim of understanding the past, is the “quintessential asymmetrical science”, and that
ethnoarchaeo­logy must be refashioned as the “archaeology of the present” which will help
to bypass the bothersome Cartesian dualisms (González-Ruibal, 2006). He also believes that
archaeologists can help understand the present in a different way, and therefore proposes to
approach the study of present societies throughout their materiality based on three concep-
tual bases: the French anthropology of technology, the symmetrical perspective, and psycho-
analysis (González-Ruibal, 2014: 8). Most of all, he is deeply convinced that ethnoarchaeology
has to be a tool for the defense of the colonized and subordinated people under study.
Also in Ethiopia, ethnoarchaeological research is being undertaken by J. Salazar
(Salazar et al., 2012 and in press,) included in the project led by Tim Clack and Marcus
Brittain in the Omo Valley (Brittain et al., 2013). One of these studies is an interesting