ABSTRACT
The discussions of innovation and technological style in Chapter 5 are also related to the topics of this chapter. In the first section, I examine innovations in the materials used to make ornaments and “luxury” goods in the Indus Valley Tradition of South Asia, and how the use and development of these new materials relates to continuities and changes in the technological traditions of this region, particularly in relation to apparent changes in social status and identity. In the second section, I examine the technologies used in religious rituals in the American Southwest, again seeing examples of changing and continuing technological practices. However, additional archaeological approaches and topics are also covered in this chapter, such as the archaeological determination of the relative value of objects for prehistoric societies, and the relationship between valued objects and status. The importance of discard patterns illustrated in the second section shows why technological systems do not end with consumption, and why archaeologists are so precise about the exact structure of heaps of garbage.
