Renewal and reinvention : the role of learning strategies in the Early to Late Middle Bronze Age of the Carpathian Basin

In this thesis a deep understanding of the principles of pottery manufacturing has been placed at the centre of the search for learning strategies in a prehistoric context. Learning strategies are argued to be culturally and socially specific. They, therefore, have an important role to play in understanding broader social mechanisms. By developing a new methodology that encompasses a wide range of technological observations it has been possible to document technological signatures of production. Moreover, by combining this close observation of technological signatures of production with an equally profound understanding of the nature of the skill acquisition it has proven possible to assess degrees of skill related to specific vessel groups. Skill starts with the way in which discursive knowledge it turned into procedural knowledge through the repetitive enactment of a skill. This in turn leads to repeated processes of production and specific classes of pots that share the same socially constituted technological signatures. Arising from this approach it has been possible to explore the very different roles that individual vessel groups play in articulating social dynamics. Moreover, it has been possible to identify the possibility of two arenas of skill, of a formal and less formal one, each related to particular institutional practices. A formal skill arena is argued to be linked to a highly prescribed learning strategy that safeguards the continuity of elite and specialist pottery vessels. This is turns protects the articulation of rank through the visual display of an elite category of material culture. Meanwhile, an informal arena of skill is argued to be linked to the expression of kinship relations. In this informal arena of skill a less structured regime results in a limited opportunity to gain the incremental acquisition of procedural knowledge. This results in a static and, therefore, lower investment of skill in this learning arena.