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Black Swans and Archaeological Interpretation

Sandra Montn-Subasa
a
Catalan Institution for Reasearch and Advanced Studies (ICREA), Department of Humanities,
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
Online publication date: 15 September 2010

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ARTICLE
SARC

Norwegian Archaeological Review, Vol. 43, No. 1, 2010

Black Swans and Archaeological

Interpretation
SANDRA MONTN-SUBAS
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Black Swans and Archaeological Interpretation

Black Swans are extraordinary, highly unexpected events. Inspired by Nicholas

Talebs 2007 book of the same title, my contention in this paper is that exceptional events carry a great and as yet untapped explanatory potential in the
field of archaeology. Archaeological exceptions, i.e. instances or occurrences
deviating from the archaeological norms and patterns as constructed in our
discipline, are usually dismissed, ignored or deemed irrelevant to any account
of social dynamics and human behaviour in the past. Upon closer examination,
however, archaeological Black Swans may provide hitherto unsuspected
explanations for certain phenomena of past societies.
The above claim will be illustrated here on the basis of two examples from
the mortuary record of south-eastern Iberias Argaric society (c. 22501450
cal. BC). In the first case studied by Colomer in her PhD dissertation we will
see how substandard funerary urns that try to replicate typical funerary containers may give us the clue to understand pottery manufacture in the Argaric
world. In the second instance, we shall explore, through the study of a singular
silver awl found in an Argaric tomb, the symbolic value that some objects
related to daily maintenance chores may have attained as grave goods.

INTRODUCTION
Nicholas Talebs The Black Swan: The
Impact of the Highly Improbable, published
in April 2007, became an academic best seller
almost immediately. Its main thesis is that
the extraordinary and the unusual improbable events (Black Swans) which are entirely
unexpected (outliers) may hold the key to
explain the ordinary and the usual. As an
archaeologist I was intrigued by this powerful idea, and could not fail to wonder about
the impact of black swans in my own field:
if as Taleb suggests black swans are to be
found in most every area of human activity,
could archaeology be an exception? Examples of highly unexpected events with big

effects abound in Talebs book: from the

1929 Wall Street Crash to the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001 through the
success of J. K. Rowlings Harry Potter novels,
rare events can be seen to shape everyday
existence. Indeed life is very unusual (Taleb
2007:xxiv) and what is beyond the realm of
usual expectation integrates the course of
quotidian life. As I will try to show in what
follows, archaeology is no exception to this
principle.
I shall be developing my arguments in
three stages. First, I will briefly explore the
relationship between black swans and complex
systems, focusing on how in certain disciplines such as modern biology, normality
may be explained in terms of what lies beyond

Sandra Montn-Subas, Catalan Institution for Reasearch and Advanced Studies (ICREA), Department of Humanities,
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. E-mail: sandra.monton@upf.edu

DOI: 10.1080/00293651003798788 2010 Taylor & Francis

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Sandra Montn-Subas

the boundaries of the normal. I will then

move on to the field of archaeology, where
the same principles have not usually been
applied, to try to reflect on why and how precisely that is the case. Finally, I shall illustrate the relevance of exceptions for
archaeological interpretation by means of
two examples from the mortuary record of El
Argar (local name of Bronze Age communities in south-eastern Iberia):
1.

2.

uncommon substandard funerary urns

that try to copy standardized funerary
containers and may provide us with
the clue to understand pottery manufacture in these communities; and
the importance that the presence of an
unparalleled silver awl found as part of
the mortuary equipment in one Argaric
tomb may have to reinforce the symbolism given to the remaining awls,
usually recovered from Argaric tombs.

BLACK SWANS AND COMPLEX

SYSTEMS
Like many other scholars in different fields,
archaeologists have to deal with complex
systems or perhaps I should say extremely
complex systems since archaeology
attempts to understand what life was like in
the human communities of the past.
Although the study of complex systems
can be approached in different ways, in general terms complexity needs to be reduced in
order to be understood (Taleb 2007:64),
which holds true also for information and
most specifically in the context of our
discussion for archaeological information.
Complexity ensembles need to be dissected
into smaller units in order to be processed,
which is precisely what archaeology accomplishes by means of patterns, models and
norms, such as different kinds of material
culture typologies, settlement patterns, burial
patterns and so on. In this regard, archaeology does not differ from other disciplines
dealing with complex systems.

Unlike scholars in other fields, however,

when it comes to processing and interpreting
complexity archaeologists tend to disregard,
discard or downplay the relevance of the
exceptional, the unusual and the extraordinary.
Extraordinary in this context refers to both
the characteristics of material findings and
their possible associations; the contrast with
other fields is worth emphasizing here, since
there are disciplines which have precisely
focused on the extraordinary in order to
understand and explain the ordinary. Let us
consider, for instance, modern biology,
where research on genetics and mutations
provides many examples of oddities whose
proper analysis has resulted in a greater understanding of what constitutes the ordinary. In
this sense, Leroi (2003) provides different
examples from medical records of how the
human genetic code is revealed through the
study of mutations, polymorphisms or other
changes; and there are many other examples
in medicine, physics, biophysics, economics,
mathematics, etc. In Talebs words, we need
to study the rare and extreme events in order
to figure out common ones (2007:xxiv).
Besides being uncommon and unanticipated,
one of the main attributes of black swans is
therefore their explanatory potential, their
ability to account for the ordinary.
Can the same principles be applied to
archaeology, in its different dimensions?
Does the unexpected hold the key to understanding the regular? Although the dominance of the normative and the search for
regularities in archaeological work have traditionally left black swans outside the framework of interpretations and explanations,
from my own experience as an archaeologist
I can venture an affirmative answer to both
questions.
We could perhaps discuss black swans in
archaeology from different angles. In fact,
owing to the always-in-process nature of the
type of information archaeological interpretations are based upon, the discipline seems
to me to be particularly exposed to the
impact of unexpected findings. Quite often,

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Black Swans and Archaeological Interpretation

however, black swans are acknowledged only
retroactively, when they turn out to be so
abundant as to become themselves the norm,
as was the case, for instance, with the radiocarbon dates that ruined the diffusionist
accounts of the European Bronze Age
(Renfrew 1973).
Nevertheless, in what follows, I shall be
focusing on a particular methodological issue
related to the nurturing material of archaeological interpretation: the archaeological
exceptions that, despite deviating from constructed archaeological norms and patterns,
help us understand better the wider archaeological context. As already noticed by the
general postmodern movement in archaeology,
exceptions to what is regarded as normal are
quite frequent in the archaeological record
(see, e.g., Shanks and Hodder 1995). And
they also bear material witness to peoples
decisions, actions and interactions in the
past. My intention, however, is not only to
note the presence of archaeological exceptions but to show that their explanatory relevance in the context where they appear
should be brought into the foreground.
ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE GRAND
NARRATIVES
I am not suggesting that each and every
anomalous archaeological finding should
have the power to account for the social
dynamics of past periods; the point I am
trying to make is that, by the reverse token,
anomalies cannot simply be ignored because
they are uncommon, as if their occurrence
did not require an explanation.
Back in 1995, Deetz and Scott coined the
term material events, and wrote about their
different degrees of significance in the context of historical archaeology, with the
caveat that there might be events of inconsequential significance . . . not reflecting in any
way the larger course of events in which they
took place (Deetz & Scott 1995:115). As
Foxhall noticed later on, whether consciously or not, archaeologists conceptualize

their finds, at least for the purpose of presenting an archaeological narrative, as

events (2000:485). But, while Deetz and
Scott (1995) considered only those materials
encountered over a wide area and thus the
result of larger scale forces to be highly
significant, I can also provide examples
where material events of much more limited
appearance may also be of considerable
significance.
The traditional disregard for the extraordinary in archaeology seems to me to derive
from the prevalence of explanatory constructs that account for the past in terms of
grand narratives based upon abstract social
trends and categories. For instance, in most
of the archaeological literature dealing with
south-eastern Iberias Argaric Bronze Age
(c. 22501450 cal. BC), including the first
book published on the topic (Siret & Siret
1886), the dynamics of the period are explained
on the basis of largely abstract trends, such as
increases in population and agricultural production, technological advances and military
expansion, with little or no attention being
paid to how such trends interlock with specific human actions and experiences
(Montn-Subas 2007). By way of contrast,
the two examples from the Argaric period
that I shall be presenting below highlight the
relevance of unusual material events for our
understanding of the past.
The mismatch between the level of macrosocial structures and that of specific agency
in archaeological interpretations has not
gone unnoticed by theorists and researchers.
Influenced by the agency vs. structure controversy in the fields of anthropology and
theoretical sociology, archaeologists have
become aware that the actions and the motivations of the particular members of a given
social group are relevant to elucidating the
dynamics of social structures (for discussions
in archaeology, see Hodder 1987, Shanks &
Tilley 1987, Wobst 1997, Dobres & Robb
2000, Gardner 2007, Beck et al. 2007). In my
view, however, the significance of the comprehensive study of womens experience carried

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Sandra Montn-Subas

out by feminist scholars since the 1970s has

not been sufficiently acknowledged. The
work of feminist scholarship included
research on daily life, and the study of material traces left behind by everyday activities
(Cowan 1989, Bray 1997). In archaeology,
many of these studies, in emphasizing the
material culture of womens daily life, have
also paid attention to specific persons and
their daily interpersonal relations (Gero &
Conkey 1991, Gilchrist 2000, Hendon 2006
are only a few examples). Like a magnifying
glass, this new methodology has enabled a
reassessment of the archaeological record
focused on everyday life and the dynamics of
small-scale interactions (Kent 1990, Allison
1999, Thomas 1996 (cited in Foxhall 2000),
Picazo 1997, Colomer et al. 1998, Foxhall
2000, Gregory 2008, Montn-Subas &
Snchez-Romero 2008).
And it is precisely at the micro-scale level,
where oddities are more easily detected, that
the significance of the exceptional may begin
to be recognized. While grand narratives rely
on abstraction and generalization, the microscale, by its very nature, comprises both the
usual and the unusual, both being part and

parcel of the scenario of past societies we

seek to understand.
All the above having been said, I would
like to clarify that I am not suggesting we
should abandon patterns, categorizations or
abstractions, which are essential for human
thought. My point is that a more thorough
elucidation of patterns and categories in
archaeology must also tackle the anomalies
that do not fit within the big picture, precisely because in some cases they may hold
the key to explain the big picture itself.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXAMPLES
Though other examples illustrating the
above arguments could be found at different
temporal coordinates and in different
archaeological spaces, those I would like to
present here are drawn from south-eastern
Iberias Bronze Age Argaric society (c. 2250
1450 cal. BC) (Fig. 1).
Argaric culture is one of the better-known
periods in the prehistory of the Iberian
Peninsula. Research on Argaric societies
began at the end of the 19th century when,
after extensive excavation of numerous sites

Fig. 1. Location of Argaric communities in south-east Iberia.

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Black Swans and Archaeological Interpretation

in the area, Louis and Henri Siret proposed
the existence of Argaric culture (Siret & Siret
1886). The classical archaeological definition
of this culture is based on a combination of
elements including the presence of a specific
settlement pattern, certain kinds of metal
tools and ceramic vessels and a distinctive
burial rite.
In fact, in traditional archaeological
accounts, Argaric settlements were uniformly
thought to have been strategically located on
the terraced slopes of steep mountains and
hills, with a commanding view of the surrounding area. In some cases, the sites were
further fortified by the construction of
diverse and complex defence structures such
as stone walls, towers, bastions, forts and
stone enclosures protecting the higher areas
of the settlements, as well as those with easier
access. Recent surveys and excavations indicate, however, that, while many Argaric settlements followed the above described pattern,
not all sites shared the same characteristics;
in fact, it is now possible to differentiate four
main types of settlement (Aranda et al.
2009b):
1.

2.

3.

4.

large, centrally located sites, matching

the features traditionally associated
with Argaric sites;
minor sites, also on hilltops, with specialized economic activities such as
metal production, or cereal processing
and storage (Contreras 2000, Risch
2002);
small sites located in flat, low-lying
areas of no strategic, defensive concern. Particularly linked with optimal
land resources, especially for wet
farming, they might have supported a
specialization in farming activities
(Ayala 1991, Castro et al. 2001), and
forts linked to specific settlements and
the need to control boundaries or
access to particular territories
(Molina 1983, Ayala 1991).

The differences in size, location and material

culture between these types of settlement

have all been mobilized as evidence suggesting

that there was a hierarchical and territorially
structured pattern, whereby different sites had
specialized strategic, social and/or economic
functions and interdependent relationships.
As a matter of fact, given the diversity of
settlements, it is now burial patterns that are
widely recognized as the distinctive archaeological feature that identifies a community as
Argaric. One of the most significant features
of the Argaric funerary ritual is the location
of burials within the settlement area, usually
under the floors of the houses in four main
types of containers: ceramic urns, cists, pitgraves and covachas (small artificial caves cut
into the rock). Some of the tombs contain
funerary offerings belonging to five main
groups: pottery vessels; metal weapons such
as swords and halberds; tools (axes, daggers/
knives, awls); ornaments such as rings, bracelets, earrings, diadems (made from copper,
silver or gold) and necklaces (usually made
of stone beads); and faunal remains (usually
limbs from cattle, sheep and goats).
Tombs range from burials containing no
grave goods at all, to burials with a rich panoply of mortuary objects. Such obvious variations in funerary furnishings have been
interpreted as clear proof of the existence of
social differences at the heart of Argaric
communities. In fact, most scholars accept
the image of a deeply stratified society, with
evidence of ascribed status in the form of
wealthy child burials (Lull 1983, Molina
1983, Contreras et al. 1995, Chapman 2003,
Snchez-Romero 2004).
And it is precisely in the domain of funerary
rituals and practices that the examples of
black swans I would like to discuss below can
be found. The first one is linked to a specific
type of tomb and the second one to a particular kind of grave-goods.
ARGARIC POTTERY
Our first black swan case was first discussed
by Colomer in her PhD dissertation (1995),
and has to do with Argaric pottery, which, as

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Sandra Montn-Subas

mentioned above, has been traditionally

regarded by archaeologists as one of the distinctive traits identifying Argaric culture.
Within funerary contexts, Argaric pottery
can be found in two forms: as grave goods
and as grave containers (funerary urns). Both
types are highly standardized and follow
well-defined morphological, metrical (Lull
1983, Aranda 2004), and technological patterns (Colomer 1995, 2005). That is the reason why the most widely accepted hypothesis
about their manufacture posits the presence
of supra-domestic, full-time craft specialists,
which in turn fits with the prevailing view of
Argaric society as highly stratified (Lull
1983, Aranda 2004). As yet, however, such
conjectures are not supported by evidence of
workshops or areas set aside for ceramic
manufacture, as has been noted by some
researchers (Colomer 1995, 2005, Aranda
2004).
In the context of highly standardized pottery outlined above, Colomer noticed the
presence of a few products with a substandard finish, which did not match the high level
of skill generally attained by Argaric wares.
The objects were pieces of pottery urns that
were badly made or badly finished (both
morphologically and technologically), precisely because they were made in imitation of
Argaric models. Far from dismissing them as
anomalies, Colomer tried to explain the existence of these black swans, these containers
apparently made by unskilled potters. She
observed that all of them belonged to funerary
urns (Fig. 2), and she further noticed that
they were all employed for burying small
infants under 18 months (when age was
provided).
In our own reassessment of the data I have
found that in at least one instance (the body
in T34 at the Gatas site) the urn contained
the remains of a child between 4 and 7 years
old. I have also unsuccessfully attempted
to find other common features characterizing
all the tombs, such as the presence of mortuary
offerings. Tombs both with and without
grave goods have been documented, however,

and there seems to be no uniformity in this

regard either. Besides this, examples of urns
for child burials are known that do not
exhibit any anomaly and follow the standardized patterns. In her PhD dissertation,
Colomer suggested the possibility that, in
abnormal circumstances, young mothers
might have made the anomalous containers,
trying to replicate the canons of ceramic
manufacture but with poor results.
At any rate, what seems relevant to us in
light of the arguments being developed in
this paper is that the anomalous funerary
containers can best be understood within a
conceptual framework where pottery manufacture is seen in quite different terms from
those of the traditional hypothesis of craft
specialization. In fact, what the substandard
vessels may be indicating is that there existed
people who knew how the wares were made
through on-site observation of the process,
though they themselves did not usually manufacture pottery. As Colomer pointed out,
the reproduction (however flawed) of manufacturing techniques in the fashion attested
by the archaeological record entails direct
contact with pottery manufacture on a daily
basis, which seems hardly compatible with
the existence of a specialized artisan sector
separated from the performance of other
daily activities.
In view of all this, and in congruence with
the archaeological evidence present in the
area, the most plausible hypothesis is that in
Argaric society specific women rather than
full-time specialists were in charge of pottery production on a part-time basis, without spaces set aside for this purpose or
specialized productive structures, as is well
documented in different ethnographic and
prehistoric traditions (Barbour & Wandibba
1989 and Barley 1994 (quoted in Colomer
2005), Rice 1991, Arnold 2000, Crown
2001). Thus, only a limited number of
women would usually manufacture pottery
to cover the needs of the whole community
and would retain the attached technological
knowledge.

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Black Swans and Archaeological Interpretation

Fig. 2. Unskilled pottery urn (according to Colomer 1995).

THE ARGARIC AWLS

Our second black swan case concerns the
presence and meaning of awls in many Argaric female tombs. As was mentioned above,
Argaric communities buried their dead along
with a series of objects as funerary offering.
It is well known that they placed certain
objects in the tombs rather than others, and
that, although most offerings could turn up

indistinguishably in a mans or a womans

tomb, some categories were found only with
one or the other sex. Such is the case with
awls, mostly found in womens tombs (Fig. 3).
The association between women and awls
has been duly noted ever since the earliest
research on Argaric societies (Siret & Siret
1886, Lull & Estvez 1986, Castro et al.
19931994, Pingel et al. 2003), although

Sandra Montn-Subas

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Fig. 3. Funerary Argaric awl from Rincn de

Almedricos (after Ayala 1991).

traditionally the issue has not led to any

major debates. Only in very recent times has
the presence of awls received more attention,
and the significance of their ever-recurrent
placement in female tombs has been interpreted in symbolic terms as a question of
transversal gender identity (Montn-Subas
2007, 2010, Aranda et al. 2009a). Notable for
the previous hypothesis is the fact that funerary awls crosscut many social circumstances,
but not sex, which means that their symbolic
value in the archaeological record is most
probably related to this fact.
Indeed, unlike exclusive male metal items,
awls crosscut age and social position, are
found through the entire Argaric period and
are also recovered from non-funerary contexts of daily life. Perhaps the most controversial issue surrounding these objects is the
identification of childrens tombs where awls
are found as girls tombs. Some researchers
believe that to be the case, given that the
majority of adult tombs where awls are
placed are womens tombs (Castro et al.
19931994, Lull et al. 2004). The same has
been suggested to hold true for other archaeological contexts, either in relation to awls
(Weglian 2001) or needles (Rega 2000).
Other researchers, however, disagree with the
pervious idea, arguing that both boys and
girls might have participated in the activities
their mothers carried out, represented by
such exclusive female funerary goods (Hamlin
2001). In our particular case, if childrens
awls belong to girls, this would imply a difference from male items, since, with only one
exception, exclusive male items have not
been recovered from childrens tombs (Lull
et al. 2004).

The presence of awls is also independent of

other social categories, since they can be
found in any female tomb with grave goods.
Not everybody was buried in Argaric times,
and not all those who were buried were given
grave goods. But wherever funerary offerings
are present whether a single object or a
much wider panoply of goods the awls can
be found. And awls are, furthermore, the
only metallic funerary item that can be seen
to be sex-specific throughout the entire Argaric period. By contrast, male-exclusive metal
items in tombs show more variability during
the same span of time. In addition, awls are
also the sex-specific metallic object most
commonly found in non-funerary domestic
contexts.
Awls were traditionally thought to exhibit
very little variation, and were included in a
class of uniform tools (Montero 1994). However, in the case of the Pealosa site, where
they were studied in more detail, a morphological difference was detected between awls
recovered from funerary and from non/
funerary contexts, with the former being
longer than the latter (Moreno 2000).
According to Moreno, the awls would not
have been expressly manufactured in order
to be deposited in the tombs, but were
interred as personal belongings of the
deceased, although it is not clear what evidence supports that claim.
Following Hamlin (2001), it seems plausible that, when there is such a link between a
tool and a particular sex, it is because that
sex undertakes the activities performed with
that tool. Up until now, however, no analyses have been conducted to establish which
tasks were performed with awls, but, on the
basis of ethnographic and textual evidence,
we can safely assume that awls were
employed in day-to-day production activities
involving leather and wood, for textile and
basketry manufacture or for maintaining and
repairing certain objects (Spector 1993). And
yet, while those were the uses most awls were
probably put to, there is nevertheless one

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Black Swans and Archaeological Interpretation

black swan case where the awl could have
not attained such purposes.
I am referring to the awl found in Tomb 7
at the Argaric site of Fuente Alamo, which
was clearly not used for production or maintenance chores, because unlike most awls,
which are generally made of copper and
(occasionally) of bone it was made of silver
(Siret & Siret 1886). This case supports the
view that awls were placed in female tombs
not only as direct reminders of the work that
the women who owned them carried out, but
also because of the symbolic value they were
endowed with, which helped mark a transversal female identity cutting across social
circumstances in the funerary ritual
(Montn-Subas 2007, 2010, Aranda et al.
2009a).
What we can conclude from this is that
perhaps not all Argaric women, not even all
those who were buried with awls, did carry
out the practical tasks mentioned above. At
any rate, it seems plausible that, as an item
connected with the practical management of
everyday life, probably conducted by many
Argaric women, the awl could have been
selected symbolically to represent the hegemonic female identity in the funerary record.
Thus, awls could have served as symbolic
markers of continuity on several levels:
chronological continuity throughout the
Argaric period, continuity throughout the
social scale and continuity between the
domestic context of daily life and the
domestic context of death (Montn-Subas
2007).
CONCLUSION
I have attempted in this paper to highlight
the significance of unusual material events
for archaeological interpretation. Instead of
simply writing them off as irrelevant or idiosyncratic anomalies of no consequence to the
evaluation of general social trends, I have
presented two examples that illustrate how
and why it is important to understand

archaeological findings that depart from

what is regarded as normal.
In the first case discussed above, rare pottery urns outside the accepted standardized
classification, probably made by unskilled
potters, inspired Colomer (1995, 2005) to
propose an alternative model of pottery
manufacture, drawing from ethnographic
examples much more in agreement with
available archaeological evidence from the
area. In the second case, the unique material
characteristics of a singular silver awl, found
as a grave good in a female tomb, suggest
that awls were not always placed as tools
directly denoting everyday production activities, but rather with a symbolical meaning
linked to female identity.
To sum up: in both instances, as is often
the case, evidence might have been overlooked or dismissed as inconsequential
owing precisely to its exceptional nature, and
yet I would like to emphasize the fact that the
black swan objects have served to fashion
and cast light upon several hypotheses
accounting for different dimensions of life in
the Argaric world.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Alfredo Gonzlez
Ruibal for his constructive comments on the
first draft submitted to NAR. I am also grateful to the participants in the seminar The
explanatory power of exceptions in archaeological interpretation conducted at the
Department of Anthropology (Northwestern
University) for their valuable suggestions on
a related presentation.
REFERENCES
Allison, P. M. (ed.). 1999. The Archaeology of
Household Activities. Routledge, London.
Aranda, G. 2004. Craft specialization in pottery
production during the Bronze Age in the SouthEast of Iberia. Journal of Iberian Archaeology 6,
157180.

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10

Sandra Montn-Subas

Aranda, G., Montn-Subas, S., Snchez-Romero,

M. & Alarcn, E. 2009a. Death and everyday
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