Abstract
Archaeological studies of artifact “style” largely focus on two interrelated questions. First, what kinds of social communication take place through visual stylistic phenomena? Second, how do physical considerations affect these processes and the kinds of communication that take place? For many years, archaeologists have sought to answer these two questions by searching for cross-cultural regularities. Investigators assume that regularities do exist and that knowledge of them will result in more accurate interpretations of material records of past social conditions in any culture-historical setting. In my view, these assumptions rest on shaky ground, in particular on questionable concepts of causation.
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Braun, D.P. (1995). Style, Selection, and Historicity. In: Carr, C., Neitzel, J.E. (eds) Style, Society, and Person. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1097-4_5
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