ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the transformations of objects through different types of breakage and discusses them in relation to the classifications from the iconoclasm literature as a method for providing an additional foundation for re-interpreting these processes, particularly in relation to different levels of transformation, reversibility, intentionality and meaning. It describes broadly around the processes outlined by Michael Schiffer, comprising procurement and manufacture, ownership and use, breakage and deposition. As indicated by hoards of scrap metal, the potential for comprehensive transformations of objects by breaking and subsequent remaking is tangible, though difficult to demonstrate archaeologically. The interpretation of archaeological objects has been considered from a wide range of perspectives, allowing them to be seen as functional items engaged within economic interpretations, to symbolic objects that are representative of factors that extend beyond their immediate practical function. Perhaps one of the strongest levels of manufacture goods type of control in later prehistory was that over metalwork and the manufacture of weapons.