Stratification, Normative Discontinuity and Metaphor: Archaeology of the Middle Ground

Abstract

Normative discontinuity is little studied by archaeologists although its importance for understanding diachronic phenomena like social stratification is obvious. Cognitive research provides the ground for a Weberian theory of normative change as the outcome of contestations between competing social myths. These conflicts arise from incongruities between metaphorically-structured conceptualizations of social reality and experienced social reality. To facilitate the archaeological inference of normative change, a typology of generative rules is suggested by which normative concepts might be expressed as substantive metaphors. The methodology is applied to a pilot study of temporal covariation in pottery design imagery within three major ceramic traditions of late Nuragic Sardinia. When ‘read’ as substantive metaphorical expressions of past social experiences, late Nuragic ceramic imagery suggests a coherent set of normative concepts ‘structured’ in terms of a central ontological metaphor of the general ‘vessel-as-social-landscape’ type. Moreover, variations in that material imagery make sense in terms of normative changes conducive to the emergence of class relations.