Bringing the Past to Life: Material Culture Production and Archaeological Practice

Abstract

Performative methods in archaeology provide a valuable heuristic tool for investigating the many behaviours and interactions of both producers and consumers of material culture. Focusing on the potter’s wheel at Bronze Age Akrotiri as a socially embedded performance of technical know-how, this chapter outlines an integrated approach to material engagement across three arenas of archaeological action – experiment, analysis, and visualisation – connected by an explicit engagement with the chaîne opératoire approach. An innovative tool-kit is presented for the investigation of this technology by the wider archaeological community. Given the large-scale regional and diachronic questions that the adoption and adaptation of ancient technologies can raise, a collective approach is proposed for the interpretation of the potter’s wheel.