Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies
Orality, Memory and the Transmission of Culture

This book explores the role of formal knowledge systems in small-scale oral cultures in both historic and archaeological contexts.

Lynne Kelly (Author)

9781107059375, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 May 2015

300 pages, 43 b/w illus. 4 maps 4 tables
26.1 x 18.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.81 kg

In this book, Lynne Kelly explores the role of formal knowledge systems in small-scale oral cultures in both historic and archaeological contexts. In the first part, she examines knowledge systems within historically recorded oral cultures, showing how the link between power and the control of knowledge is established. Analyzing the material mnemonic devices used by documented oral cultures, she demonstrates how early societies maintained a vast corpus of pragmatic information concerning animal behavior, plant properties, navigation, astronomy, genealogies, laws and trade agreements, among other matters. In the second part Kelly turns to the archaeological record of three sites, Chaco Canyon, Poverty Point and Stonehenge, offering new insights into the purpose of the monuments and associated decorated objects. This book demonstrates how an understanding of rational intellect, pragmatic knowledge and mnemonic technologies in prehistoric societies offers a new tool for analysis of monumental structures built by non-literate cultures.

1. Primary orality in the archaeological context
2. Knowledge and power in oral cultures
3. Primary orality and oral mnemonic technologies
4. Material mnemonic technologies
5. Animal and plant knowledge in oral tradition
6. Time and space
7. Case study: the Yolngu system of knowledge
8. Case study: the Pueblo system of knowledge
9. Chaco Canyon in the ancestral Puebloan context
10. Poverty Point in the American Archaic context
11. Stonehenge in the British and Irish Neolithic context
12. Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Prehistoric archaeology [HDDA], Archaeology by period / region [HDD], Archaeological theory [HDA]