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67
G
ustavo
G. P
olitis
Reflections on Contemporary Ethnoarchaeology
PYRENAE,
núm.
46
vol.
1
(2015)
ISSN: 0079-8215 EISSN: 2339-9171 (p. 41-83)
by Gosselain (1992, 2002) about the variability of the technical tradition among potters in
Cameroon, first, and in Southwestern Niger, later on (Gosselain, 2008), is a good example
of this kind of integration of ethnoarchaeological production. In Latin America, this trend
is clear in the research in the Amazonia (see above) and in the contributions by Tom
Dillehay (2007), in the Mapuche land in Chile.
Ethnoarchaeology has been also active in the more general anthropological goal, which
is of great importance to archaeology as well, of understanding and exploring other forms
of thought or cosmologies. Within this field, patterns of rationality and logical structures are
analyzed to find what differs from Western patterns (Hernando, 1995). In this application
of ethnoarchaeology, the correlation with material culture is secondary to the attempt to
understand alternative cosmovisions and different logics, independently of their material
correlates. Obviously, the aim is not attempting to understand extinct norms of thought
in depth, but rather to detect, where possible, keys to its functioning and discern how and
which ideological and social factors (as well as techno-economical ones) acted on the con-
figuration of the material record. Our own research on gender, motherhood, and power
among the Awá of Brazil (Hernando
et al
., 2011) (fig. 10) and the study made by Haber
(2009) about animism among the Antofalla people in Argentina exemplify this trend.
Fig. 10.
An Awa women breastfeeding a recently captured infant monkey during a monkey hunting in which the parents were killed.
This kind of intimate link between humans and animals always amazed ethnoarchaeologists and shows a logic in which relationships
between people and animals are very different from ours. Maranhao State, Brazil 2009. Photo of the author.