Figuring the Group

Abstract

This article focuses on the social group, asking how approaches to the representation of the group (in forms such as rock-art, images painted on pottery and three-dimensional caches of figurines) can help us understand the nature of collective experience in the past. Current research has concentrated on individuals (and their experiences) in past societies, while group dynamics have been neglected. Attention should be re-directed to the wide range of emotional experiences that we know affected individuals, particularly as part of their interactions with others, during rituals and other collective events in the past. Investigation of figurative representations over a sustained period provides one means of reconstructing the repetitive, stereotyped emotions, local rules, ‘non-rational’ propensities, moral sentiments, and shared emotions that shaped group life in past societies.

The Craft of the Non-mechanically Reproducible: Targeting Centres of Faience Figurine Production in 1800–1650 BC Egypt

“…This consistency implies collective practice and a sense of shared identity. 90 They used a common yet complex vocabulary, dictated by a narrow segment of society that exercised intellectual control over the production of artefacts. The genesis of faience figurines was a creative and systematic process that gave birth to a material manifestation of the ideas involved in that process.…”

Anthropological Archaeology in 2016: Cooperation and Collaborations in Archaeological Research and Practice

“…In circulating between different individual bodies, wampum belts knit together collectivities. Similarly, Elizabeth DeMarrais () has argued that it is the repetitive, stereotyped emotions shared by groups that are most tangible to archaeologists. By looking at the norms and changes in figurative representations from ancient societies of the Americas, in particular, she considers the way collective emotions simulated and sustained the ongoing solidarity of group members.…”

Animacy, Abstraction, and Affect in the Andean Past: Toward a Relational Approach to Art

“…In the absence of writing (and a shared language), material culture would have been especially important for materializing socio-political institutions, for rituals of solidarity, for expressing ethnicity and for messages about power relations (DeMarrais 2011;DeMarrais et al 1996;). Under the Inkas, portable objects were crucial for the state's reach into (and presence in) new territories (Allen 2002;Bray 2003).…”