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Ethnoarchaeology in Mali

My ethnoarchaeological research program grew out of questions I had encountered while trying to understand archaeological approaches to ceramic style.  In particular, it seemed that most explanations for style overlooked insights from the Anthropology of Consumption about why people desired to acquire and use objects.  I thus decided to explore processes that moved pottery from its point of production in potters's households to where it was ultimately consumed.   I spent 8 months in the Inland Niger Delta of Mali between 2000-2002 documenting women potters' marketing activities and their clients consumption choices.  In the end, I spoke with over 120 potters and 100 consumers and inventoried the domestic assemblages of 100 households. 

Patriarchy & Consumption.

The central finding of the research was the extent to which patriarchal power structures in both potters' marketing strategies and their consumers purchasing decisions.  Consumers frequently bought plastic buckets and other inexpensive vessels as a way to retain control over their income, whether it was through independent craft work or selling farm produce.  If women returned home with a cash loan, it would often be appropriated by their husbands. However, domestic vessels are objects over which women have exclusive control. By purchasing a plastic or aluminum dishes however, like those for sale in the Jenne Market (see photo at left), women made sure they enjoyed some of the income they had generated.

The most impressive example how domestic vessels are used to store wealth are the wedding trousseaus that young brides assemble for their marriage.  Trousseaus typically include all the items that women need to carry out their domestic tasks as new wives.  The centre point of a trousseau, however, is a collection of enamel serving vessels. Enamels are displayed for the first 3-5 years of marriage on a table or in an armoire in the front room of the bride's home, after which the collection is divested as gifts to other women who are anticipating marriage and creating their own trousseau. As a result, enamels tend to circulate through women's social networks and serve as a substantial store of wealth controlled exclusively by women that can be sold during times of financial crisis.  However, these objects are more than economic power.  In a display, enamels measure a bride's industry and social standing.  The materiality of a display thus contributes directly to her public reputation and selfhood during a moment of profound liminality. 

 

Political Economies & Ceramic Marketing

Consumption tendencies had several impacts on potters and their production. Specific types of pottery such as ceramic cook pots and wash pots were no longer being made because consumers bought aluminum caldrons and plastic buckets.  On the other hand, traditional medicines were thought to get some of their potency by being prepared in terracotta medicine pots and the ability of water jars to keep drinking water cool ensured these continued to be bought .  Overall, however, consumers showed a marked ambivalence toward pottery.  In my census of domestic vessels in 100 households, pottery moved the shortest distance from the point of purchase to the consumer household, while enamels travelled the furthest.  


The devaluation of pottery meant that potters generally had to use extensive and innovative marketing strategies to find willing consumers.  Most potters used a mixture of selling in their home village or neighbouring villages, setting up stalls in local markets, or undertaking itinerant forms of production or marketing.  Potters had also recently started using "franchises" in which women in more distant villages were enlisted to sell on a potter's behalf in exchange for free pottery.  The creation of franchises seems to be a response to the a change in livelihood for many potter's husbands.  

Where as potters were once usually married to other craft specialists, specifically iron workers who worked and travelled with their wives, the available of scrap iron has forced many of their husbands to take up agriculture.  The new domestic work loads women encounter as a result have substantially limited their ability to market their pottery.  

One of the few exceptions is when potters have daughters who are preparing their own wedding trousseaus. Like their clients, potters are also consumers and buy plastic and aluminum vessels as a way to secure their incomes. One of the few times that potters can gain a reprieve from agricultural work was when they were obliged to create a trousseau for their daughter.  At this point, they would often use lucrative marketing strategies such as itinerant production, which allowed them to leave home for extended periods and focus entirely on making and selling pottery.

 

Ethnographic analogy & archaeological interpretation

My ethnoarchaeological research also gave me an opportunity to consider ethnoarchaeology's role in archaeological epistemology.  Much of my current interest in ethnoarchaeology is focused on an assessment of the role of ethnographic analogy in light of my work in the Inland Niger Delta and my current archaeological research program in Chihuahua. 

When I began the project, ethnoarchaeology had been the focus of several critiques that seemed to reflect a number of inconsistent expectations that people had for the subfield.  One of my hopes for the research was for me to come to my own understanding of what ethnographic engagements contributed to archaeological interpretation.  This has been especially relevant since the late 1990s when the processual and postprocessual debates dissolved into an eclectic mixture of "moderate relativisms" and "mitigated objectivisms".  Because I was also interested in consumption, I knew from the outset that my project would have to consider pottery as just one of a broad suite of domestic vessels, including plastic buckets, enamel serving vessels and aluminum caldrons.  Craft production could not then be studied as a vestige of traditional production cocooned from the impacts of a capitalist modernity. This in turn prompted a series of questions I needed to explore on how archaeologists might reconceptualize their fieldwork to avoid tropes of traditionalism.
 

My recent publications have focused on these issues.  An article for Ethnoarchaeology considers ethnoarchaeology's unsettling ties to positivist thought in the New Archaeology.  A book chapter recently published in a festschrift for the late Bruce Trigger explores how ethnoarchaeology creates independence (sensa Alison Wylie) in a postpostivisit archaeology to create mitigated forms of objectivism.  A recent conference paper and associated proceedings for the 2012 Italian Society for Ethnoarchaeology Conference explores how ethnoarchaeology operates within the political economy of global capitalism.  I am now working on a book manuscript that combines my experiences in Mali with recent archaeological research in northern Mexico to explore the potential and limitations of ethnographic analogy.

Graduate Research Opportunities.

Unfortunately, recent turmoil in the region makes research in Mali difficult.  However, I am interested in working with students on ethnoarchaeological topics in West Africa or elsewhere, and theoretically informed projects focused on interpretation and epistemology.