Hereditary emblems: Material culture in the context of social change

Emblematic artifacts, which signify personal or social identity, are potentially valuable sources of information about social organization. To date, however, there has been little comparative study of the social contexts that give rise to use of different kinds of emblems, nor of the ways in which the social significance of emblematic artifacts may change over time. This paper is specifically concerned with the emergence and changing use of hereditary emblems in stratified societies. The histories of lineage devices in western Europe and Japan exhibit a number of similarities which suggest that, in complex societies, hereditary emblems are likely to appear in the presence of unstable systems of social rank. Once introduced, such emblems may acquire additional, nonhereditary, significance without undergoing noticeable iconographic change. The cases examined here suggest a series of general propositions about evolutionary relationships between hereditary emblem use and socioeconomic factors. Although we currently lack a well-developed methodology for identifying hereditary emblems archaeologically, it is clear that the key to their identification lies not in stylistic analysis, but rather in their contexts of use and patterns of association with other items of material culture. Hypotheses derived from consideration of the evolution of lineage emblems in western Europe and Japan are applied to the interpretation of shield decorations of the Archaic and Classical periods in Attic Greece.