ABSTRACT
Studying the social has been the primary goal of the human sciences, which have long approached person and society from a variety of viewpoints, all trying to understand how and why humans function, evolve and form their social reality. Each discipline has followed its own trajectory, but there has also been a continuous interchange of diverse theories and viewpoints. ˆe achievements of the social sciences throughout the last century have naturally influenced archaeological interpretation, which has borrowed theoretical schemes from sociology, anthropology, history and geography, shifting stance according to fashionable theories (Gkiasta 2008: chapter 1). A common characteristic in most approaches is the emphasis on general models, an effort to ease our anxiety over what society is and by extension what humans are, in effect social beings. ˆe importance of acknowledging culture-specific factors has of course been stressed, while the traditional conflict between focus on either the social or the personal has been eased (Maisonneuve 1973; Gkiastas 2008). A psycho-sociological perspective emphasises the inseparable relationship between the two: it combines notions from ethnology, sociology and psychology and has developed a relevant language and terminology – e.g. interaction, communication, role and influence instead of class, rules, values (sociological) or motives and identification (psychological). Archaeology stands to benefit much from such a perspective. Although archaeo-
logical data admittedly do not consist of living human beings, but of material remains that represent conscious or unconscious human practices and which are even harder to decipher, a bottom-up approach that pays respect to social identities allows better insights into social constructions and embraces a potential of differentiation as well as
the possibility of broader schemes of explanation. Social practices, present or past, hide human actions, interactions, beliefs, emotions – in other words a complex frame of relationships and identifications that construct the social. Because my own interest lies in raising questions and suggesting possible frameworks of interpretation that might enlighten social dynamics on prehistoric Crete, I undertake a study of the material record that goes beyond description and identification of large social schemes and seeks to uncover the fine social lines that hold the social framework together, and that operate at multiple levels, starting from the construction of personal and social identity. ˆis chapter considers the meaning of social identity and how it is linked to
materiality and the landscape; it proceeds with an overview of the Early Bronze Age archaeological record, looking for material signatures that can reveal processes of social identity construction.
