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Assessing the influence of culture on craft skills: A quantitative study with expert Nepalese potters
Studies have documented that traditional motor skills (i.e. motor habits) are part of the cultural way of life that characterises each society. Yet, it is still unclear to what extent motor skills are inherited through culture. Drawing on ethnology and motor behaviour, we addressed this issue throug...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7529208/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33001994 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239139 |
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author | Gandon, Enora Nonaka, Tetsushi Sonabend, Raphael Endler, John |
author_facet | Gandon, Enora Nonaka, Tetsushi Sonabend, Raphael Endler, John |
author_sort | Gandon, Enora |
collection | PubMed |
description | Studies have documented that traditional motor skills (i.e. motor habits) are part of the cultural way of life that characterises each society. Yet, it is still unclear to what extent motor skills are inherited through culture. Drawing on ethnology and motor behaviour, we addressed this issue through a detailed description of traditional pottery skills. Our goal was to quantify the influence of three kinds of constraints: the transcultural constraints of wheel-throwing, the cultural constraints induced via cultural transmission, and the potters' individual constraints. Five expert Nepalese potters were invited to produce three familiar pottery types, each in five specimens. A total of 31 different fashioning hand positions were identified. Most of them (14) were cross-cultural, ten positions were cultural, five positions were individual, and two positions were unique. Statistical tests indicated that the subset of positions used by the participants in this study were distinct from those of other cultural groups. Behaviours described in terms of fashioning duration, number of gestures, and hand position repertoires size highlighted both individual and cross-cultural traits. We also analysed the time series of the successive hand positions used throughout the fashioning of each vessel. Results showed, for each pottery type, strong reproducible sequences at the individual level and a clearly higher level of variability between potters. Overall, our findings confirm the existence of a cultural transmission in craft skills but also demonstrated that the skill is not fully determined by a cultural marking. We conclude that the influence of culture on craft skills should not be overstated, even if its role is significant given the fact that it reflects the socially transmitted part of the skill. Such research offers insights into archaeological problems in providing a representative view of how cultural constraints influence the motor skills implied in artefact manufacturing. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7529208 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-75292082020-10-02 Assessing the influence of culture on craft skills: A quantitative study with expert Nepalese potters Gandon, Enora Nonaka, Tetsushi Sonabend, Raphael Endler, John PLoS One Research Article Studies have documented that traditional motor skills (i.e. motor habits) are part of the cultural way of life that characterises each society. Yet, it is still unclear to what extent motor skills are inherited through culture. Drawing on ethnology and motor behaviour, we addressed this issue through a detailed description of traditional pottery skills. Our goal was to quantify the influence of three kinds of constraints: the transcultural constraints of wheel-throwing, the cultural constraints induced via cultural transmission, and the potters' individual constraints. Five expert Nepalese potters were invited to produce three familiar pottery types, each in five specimens. A total of 31 different fashioning hand positions were identified. Most of them (14) were cross-cultural, ten positions were cultural, five positions were individual, and two positions were unique. Statistical tests indicated that the subset of positions used by the participants in this study were distinct from those of other cultural groups. Behaviours described in terms of fashioning duration, number of gestures, and hand position repertoires size highlighted both individual and cross-cultural traits. We also analysed the time series of the successive hand positions used throughout the fashioning of each vessel. Results showed, for each pottery type, strong reproducible sequences at the individual level and a clearly higher level of variability between potters. Overall, our findings confirm the existence of a cultural transmission in craft skills but also demonstrated that the skill is not fully determined by a cultural marking. We conclude that the influence of culture on craft skills should not be overstated, even if its role is significant given the fact that it reflects the socially transmitted part of the skill. Such research offers insights into archaeological problems in providing a representative view of how cultural constraints influence the motor skills implied in artefact manufacturing. Public Library of Science 2020-10-01 /pmc/articles/PMC7529208/ /pubmed/33001994 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239139 Text en © 2020 Gandon et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Gandon, Enora Nonaka, Tetsushi Sonabend, Raphael Endler, John Assessing the influence of culture on craft skills: A quantitative study with expert Nepalese potters |
title | Assessing the influence of culture on craft skills: A quantitative study with expert Nepalese potters |
title_full | Assessing the influence of culture on craft skills: A quantitative study with expert Nepalese potters |
title_fullStr | Assessing the influence of culture on craft skills: A quantitative study with expert Nepalese potters |
title_full_unstemmed | Assessing the influence of culture on craft skills: A quantitative study with expert Nepalese potters |
title_short | Assessing the influence of culture on craft skills: A quantitative study with expert Nepalese potters |
title_sort | assessing the influence of culture on craft skills: a quantitative study with expert nepalese potters |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7529208/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33001994 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239139 |
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