The Evolution of Happiness (with Stephen Loring)

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ArchaeologiesJournal of the World ArchaeologicalCongress ISSN 1555-8622 ArchDOI 10.1007/s11759-012-9208-x

The Evolution of Happiness

Stephen Loring & Joan Gero

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Stephen Loring, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian

Institution, NMNH MRC-112, PO Box 37012, Washington,DC 20013-7012, USA

E-mail: [email protected]

Joan Gero, Department of Anthropology, American University,4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20016-8003, USA

ABSTRACT________________________________________________________________

The authors reveal a dramatic but previously unsuspected pattern in

archaeological illustration: the presence of smiling faces composed of

artifacts arranged in plates of archaeological illustrations and photographs.

In this paper, we explore the possible meanings that lurk behind and

emerge from these mysterious portraits, questioning whether they are

byproducts of human agency or whether, instead, they represent new

examples of how material objects act back on (or ‘‘interfere with’’) human

agency.________________________________________________________________

Resume: Les auteurs revelent un motif dramatique mais jusqu’a present

insoupconne de l’illustration archeologique : la presence d’artefacts arranges

de facon a composer des visages souriants sur des planches d’illustrations

et de photographies archeologiques. Dans cet article, nous explorons les

significations possibles qui se cachent derriere et emergent de ces portraits

mysterieux, en nous posant la question de savoir si nous avons affaire au

resultat d’une action humaine deliberee, ou s’il s’agit la de nouveaux

examples de la facon dont les objets materiels reagissent a (ou « interferent

avec ») les actions des hommes.________________________________________________________________

Resumen: Los autores revelan un patron impresionante pero insospechado

previamente en la ilustracion arqueologica: la presencia de caras son-

rientes compuestas por artefactos colocados en laminas de ilustraciones

arqueologicas y fotografıas. En el presente documento, exploramos los

posibles significados que acechan detras de estos misteriosos retratos y

emergen de los mismos, cuestionandonos si son derivados de la accion

humana o si, en cambio, representan nuevos ejemplos de como los objetos

materiales frenan (o ‘‘interfieren con’’) la accion humana._______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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� 2012 World Archaeological Congress

Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress (� 2012)

DOI 10.1007/s11759-012-9208-x

Author's personal copy

KEY WORDS

Materiality, Artifact plates, Archaeological illustration_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Yet, as I looked into the matter, smiling faces began to crop up every-where.—Angus Trumble (2004: xxxii)

The recognition of patterning in artifacts or other classes of archaeologicaldata undoubtedly forms the basis of the interpretive act, an essential firststep in understanding the past. Discerning patterns is fundamental to cre-ating typologies, establishing chronologies, understanding the use of spacewithin structures and on the larger landscape, assigning functions toobjects, etc. We could even say, on the face of things, that pattern recogni-tion comes ahead—or is at the fore-front—(or is it the forehead!) of every-thing else in archaeological reasoning.

Sometimes, however, even when a pattern can be clearly discerned, noobvious interpretive meaning readily presents itself. It is our feeling thateven in such cases it may be important to publish one’s (or two’s) obser-vations and hypotheses, however contradictory and divergent, especiallywhen the artifact patterning is broadly time transgressive and widelyinterregional, suggesting deep—or pan—(or deadpan!)—human signifi-cance.

Perhaps it is not surprising that there are competing models of how to‘read’ the artifact assemblages we are about to discuss. We are told to viewartifact assemblages as humans’ links to a natural environment, as staticmeasures of efficiency, as encoding culturally-shared symbolic information,as stylistic messages of cultural affiliation (Wobst 1977), as material inter-ferences where objects are seen to effect human behavior (Wobst 1999),and of course there are many others.

But until now there has been little professional attention to the factthat as we peruse archaeological journals and published reports, we regu-larly confront human faces smiling artifactually back at us (Figure 1),grinning from the pages of publications of wildly different time periodsand relating to the prehistory and history of widely separated parts of theworld. These faces beam out as whole page illustrations (Figure 2), or theypeep with humility from complicated groupings (Figure 3). Their facialelements are comprised of many materials including plant fiber (Figure 4),or bone, or stone—struck, ground or drilled—(Figure 5), or metal of vari-

STEPHEN LORING AND JOAN GERO


Figure 1. The Spiro Mound Collection in the Museum, by E.K. Burnett, and HistoricalSketch of the Spiro Mound, by Forrest E. Clements. Contributions from the Museum

of the American Indian, Heye Foundation Volume XIV (1945). Plate XXIV



ous elements or alloys (Figure 6), or shell. Their facial proportions andfeatures are infinitely variable and widely expressive, twinkling withancient secrets (Figure 7), or, more rarely, tearful with prehistoric suffer-ing (Figure 8).

How are we to FACE this artifact phenomenon? These fully formed,front-on facial formulations are certainly not merely a practical solution tophoto plate layout. Rationalists cannot explain a ‘‘functional artifact face’’because, let’s face it, a face doesn’t maximize space any more efficiently ormore symmetrically than, say, a rectangular block, or the neat rows pre-ferred by most (more conventional) (faceless) archaeologists. Deeper signif-icances are somehow implied.

So let us examine the corpus more carefully. A sustained, if unsystem-atic, perusal of archaeological literature —with a decidedly English-lan-guage bias— has produced approximately 30 examples of artifact platesarranged as human faces, of which 24 are presented in this paper. Todate we have no examples prior to 1875 nor any after 1979. As archaeol-ogists inspecting patterns of variation, we instinctively turn to the chro-

Figure 2. Primitive Money, by H.A. Wieschhoff. Philadelphia: University MuseumBulletin, University of Pennsylvania Vol. 11 (3) (1945). Figure 2: ‘‘Primitive shell

money.’’



Figure 3. Prehistory of the Upper Ohio Valley, by Wm. J.Mayer-Oaks. Annals of the

Carnegie Museum Vol. 34, (1955). Figure 23: ‘‘Typical Artifacts of the Ceramic Epoch,Middle Woodland Period’’, (see K, L, M)



nology of facial assemblages: in our 100 + year sample, the average dateoccurs precisely in 1948 and the median date is 1945. Might the intensi-fied concentration of photographic plates of artifacts arranged as smiling

Figure 4. The Spiro Mound Collection in the Museum, by E.K. Burnett, and HistoricalSketch of the Spiro Mound, by Forrest E. Clements. Contributions from the Museum

of the American Indian, Heye Foundation Volume XIV (1945). Plate XCII: Textile frag-ments 18/9344



faces in the immediate post-WW II era be related to celebrations of warvictory (Figure 9)? And, relatedly perhaps, are the smiles related toAnglo-American archaeologists flexing their hegemonic muscles? Do wesmile because we’re powerful!?? Do these images show archaeologistssharing the same optimism as the rest of the allied world for a new order

Figure 5. The Spiro Mound Collection in the Museum, by E.K. Burnett, and HistoricalSketch of the Spiro Mound, by Forrest E. Clements. Contributions from the

Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation Volume XIV (1945). Plate XXV:stone beads



of world peace: ‘‘Happy days are here again’’, ‘‘happy faces in happyplaces’’, expressed so eloquently also in archaeology?

Facing-Up To The Archaeologists

Alternatively, if not related to their chronological positions, do thesefaces reveal something about the illustrious researchers who organizedthe illuminating artifact plates: can we, for instance, find recognizable self-portraits? Could we be gazing here at the actual stylized portrait of one ofthe excavators of the famous Olmec site of La Venta (Figure 10) or somenameless pot-hunter slyly gloating over his ill-gotten gains (Figure 11)? Or,if not individual portraits, perhaps the artifact smiles signify some commonsignificant feature shared by all researchers who adopt this format to dis-play their data: were they all NSF grant recipients, or brand new parents(Figure 12)? Were they all famous for inciting a paradigm shift (Kuhn1962)? Did alcohol or other substance abuse play a role in the developmentof this pattern?

A slightly different interpretation considers the motivations of thearchaeologists who put these images into circulation. Maybe we have stum-bled upon a secret honor pledge from an alienated strand of humanists

Figure 6. Precolumbian gold. La Cultura Viru, by Rafael Larco Hoyle (1945)



Figure 7. Igbo-Ukwu: An Account of Archaeological Discoveries in Eastern Nigeria,by Thurstan Shaw (1970). The Institute of African Studies. London: Faber and Faber.

Plate VIII: ‘‘Strings of beads and pendants’’



back in the 1960s or 1970s (Figure 7), entered into at a fretful SAA bar-gathering following a session where all the papers had dealt with energycapture and optimizing strategies… and a break-away group of rogue ar-cheologists insisted on inserting people into a prehistoric landscape of face-less blobs (decades before Ruth Tringham 1991)! How cleverly they haveperpetuated the arti-FACE in the artifacts!

We admit this is far-fetched. But, if these are not deliberate archaeo-logical communications, what else could they mean? Could the artifactfaces be the result of the subconscious at work (Figures 13, 14, 15)?Could they represent a counter-intuitive psychological aspect of archaeol-ogists that belies the humorless, unblinkingly serious and altogether dryscholarly exterior of our profession, the public face of professional schol-arship?1 Do the artifactual faces reveal an unsuspected thrall of happyabandon and frivolity just as we are most intent on appearing earnest?Indeed, we do try to be dry, but the truth will ‘‘out’’ at the least sus-pecting moments! Or this (Figure 16): could these faces represent anunconscious archaeological need or desire to please—to be approvedof—in one’s research interpretations? Or an unconscious hope that awinning smile will help sell the broader framework we’ve erected aroundthe data?

Figure 8. La Venta’s Green Stone Tigers, by Matthew W. Stirling. National Geo-graphic Magazine 84:321-332, (1943), page 332: ‘‘This New World Jade, Matching

Burma’s Most Precious, is Worth a Small Fortune’’



As is so often the case in archaeological interpretation, none of thesepossibilities is completely satisfying and we are compelled to consideryet more and different interpretive alternatives. It has to be consideredthat the smiling patterns may not be either deliberate or sub-conscious

Figure 9. The Spiro Mound Collection in the Museum, by E.K. Burnett, and Historical

Sketch of the Spiro Mound, by Forrest E. Clements. Contributions from theMuseum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation Volume XIV (1945). Plate LXXXVI:

ear-spools



Figure 10. La Venta, Tabasco: A Study of Olmec Ceramics and Art, by Phillip Druc-

ker. Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 153 (1952).Plate 52: ‘‘Offerings From Sandstone Cist, Mound A-3’’

Figure 11. Photographs of Interesting and Outstanding Specimens of Indian Relicsfrom the Edward W. Payne Stone Age Collection. Anonymous, Springfield, Illinois,

Williamson Print. and Pub. c. 1937



products of archaeological practice at all. Reading the artifactual facesmay have nothing to do with archaeologists, conscious or unconscious,encoding or broadcasting messages in their data. Instead, we must admitto an even more puzzling and intriguing possibility: that the facialassemblages are somehow profoundly structured by, and arise directlyout of, the specific ancient cultures that produced the facial material.If it is not the archaeologists communicating to us here, then wemust consider that the cultural remains themselves are speaking… per-haps about some very basic truths… like the conditions of humanhappiness!

Facing Up To Arty- Facts

Let us consider the qualities of different cultures and cultural contexts thatlend their materials to being portrayed more or less smilingly. We can sug-gest three possibilities:

Possibility #1: Climate as a context for emotion. We have been unableto identify any smiling faces in arrangements of arctic or subarctic culturalartifacts. Apparently, smiles emerge more readily from tropical and warmtemperate zones (e.g. Figures 2, 7, 12). In modern arctic cultures, the

Figure 12. Plantation Slavery on Barbados, West Indies, by Jerome S. Handler and

Frederick W. Lange (1979), Archaeology 32(4):45–52. p. 48: Components of the neck-lace found in Burial 72



Figure 13. Primitive Money, by H.A. Wieschhoff. Philadelphia: University Museum

Bulletin, University of Pennsylvania Vol. 11 (3) (1945). Figure 4: ‘‘Beads of Porcelainand Glass from the Belgian Congo. String of Ostrich Egg Shell from South Africa’’



Figure 14. Excavations at La Venta Tabasco, 1955, by Philip Drucker, Robert F. Heiz-

er, and Robert J. Squier, Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulle-tin 170 (1959). Plate 37: ‘‘Obverse and reverse views of jade objects from Offering

No. 5’’



northern Algonquian and Inuit provide a clue since sometimes frownersoutnumber smilers, tempting us to fall back on the physiognomy of smil-ing risk in cold temperatures. By the same token, we note the smile-lessvisage from the Upper Paleolithic Perigord region (Figure 17)2, a subarcticzone by climatic analogy but one that is situated at a relatively lowlatitude.

Possibility #2: Gender as a conditioning variable. Is smile morphologyengendered: are some smiling faces female and others male, and does onegendered class of materials smile more readily than the other? Do thefaces provide clues to matriarchies and patriarchies of prehistory? Forinstance, does the austere Upper Paleolithic male (Figure 17) reveal some-thing culturally significant about masculinity (cool, remote, uncommuni-cative) that is different from the happy-faced glitzy female Amazonian(Figure 18)?

Possibility #3 (and we admit we’re partial to this model): social stratifi-cation, or the evolution of happiness argument. Organized chronologically

Figure 15. The Archeological History of New York, by Arthur C. Parker (1920), NewYork State Museum Bulletin 235. Albany. Plate 23: String of shell beads, elk teeth and

shell disk from a site in Middlesex on Canandaigua Lake



Figure 16. The Ruins of Holmul Guatemala, by Raymond E. Merwin and GeorgeC. Vaillant (1932), Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and

Ethnology, Harvard University 3(2). Plate 35



by culture periods, our data clearly show neutral or anxious faces givingway to tentative smiles which in turn evolve to increasingly broad-facedgrins as the level of socio-cultural complexity increases. Starting from thenervous smile-less Upper Paleolithic, we can observe, in broad strokes,the emergence of elites who assert increasing control over labor andresources.

The sequence of smiling-face plates can now be displayed to showever more intense expressions of happiness, joie-de-vivre, exuberance etc.,

Figure 17. Reliquiae Aquitanicae; Contributions to the Archaeology and Palaeontolo-gy of Perigord and the Adjoinging Provinces of Southern France By Edouard Lartet

and Henry Christy (1875). London: Williams & Norgate. PLATE XI: ‘‘Dordogne’’



Figure 18. Art and Artefacts of the Pacific, Africa and the Americas: the James Hoo-

per Collection, by Steven Phelps. Hutchinson of London Ltd. (1976). South America,PLATE 216: ‘‘Whistle, Ear Ornament, Pipe Bowl, Necklaces, Cylinder pendant’’

Figure 19. The Augustine Site: A Mound from the Maritimes, by Christopher Turn-

bull. Archaeology of Eastern North America 4:50-62. (1976). Plate 3: ‘‘AugustineMound Artifacts’’



starting at the early (not-so-happy) end, in the Upper Paleolithic, and thenthe New Brunswick Early Woodland Maritime sequence (Figure 19), small-faced and kind of straight mouthed… moving on through the mound-building chiefdoms of the Lower Mississippi Valley who are shown nowlarger but still as a fairly simple construction, where a straight-lippedmouth (from a pocket ruler-protractor) has to be provided by the archae-ologist to complete the image (Figure 20). Next we come to the chiefly(female???) agriculturalists of the Cook Islands (Figure 21) with their stillstraight mouths, until we finally get to ‘‘high culture’’ with the broadlysmiling Olmec rulers (Figures 8, 10, 14). We then follow the evolution ofthe oh-so-happy elites in a series of large-format, beaming portraits in

Figure 20. ‘‘Hopewellian’’ Elements in Northern Georgia, by A.J. Waring, Jr. AmericanAntiquity 11:119-121 (1945). Plate XVII: ‘‘Artifacts from stone mound near Cartersville,

Georgia’’



early full-blown states: the early Maya state represented at Holmul in thePeten (Figure 16), the Inka installed on the Island of Titicaca (Figure 22),the powerful Saxons of the British Isles (Figure 23), and the ever-so-happyHarrappans of Mohenjo-daro (Figure 24).

Now that is a powerful empirical pattern. Once again, it is the elites dic-tating their version of history, declaring that life has gotten so much betterwith the continued intensification of socio-political hierarchies, with theunbridled expansion of opportunity to create and consolidate wealth. Thesmiles of the top one percent just grow ever broader, reflecting the sameresults as numerous sociological studies that demonstrate rich people arehappier than poor people (Pew Research Center 2006), and that conserva-tives are happier than liberals (Brooks 2012).

Other Clues

If it is cultural evolution that we’re tracking, we would want to test thispattern by following the smile trajectory into the world of modern artifacts.Focusing on today’s data, we find some confirmation that the evolutionary

Figure 21. Art and Artefacts of the Pacific, Africa and the Americas: the James

Hooper Collection, by Steven Phelps. Hutchinson of London Ltd. (1976). The CookIslands, Plate 75 (page 139): ‘‘Manihiki, Bowls, Fan handle, Model Canoe’’



story continues and there is still much elite happiness afoot, or a-face, ora-head (Figure 25).

But at the same time, today’s material culture faces remind us thatintensifying socio-political hierarchies simultaneously create greater andever more discouraging disparities in wealth and well-being (Figure 26),and that as wealth increases and becomes more concentrated at the top,poverty expands in the rest of the population. In an artifactual parallel, theinstances of artifact unhappiness numerically outweigh artifact happiness(Figure 27). Somewhere along the evolutionary track, the smile seems tohave turned an evolutionary corner towards a more regressive median. Par-ticularly worrisome is the replacement of human agency—that is, humanstaking action to arrange smiles out of artifacts—with material agency,where the less-than-beaming faces have taken over and embedded them-selves in the artifacts.

Figure 22. The Islands of Titicaca and Koati, by Adolph F. Bandelier. New York:

Hispanic Society of America (1910). Plate XXXII: ‘‘Metallic Objects of Personal Decora-tion from Titicaca Island’’



Figure 23. An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of Cambridge, Part

I. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (1959). Plate 3: ‘‘Museum of Archaeologyand Ethnology, Pagan Saxon Grave Goods, from St. John’s College Playing Fields’’

Figure 24. The Indus Civilization, Third Edition, by Sir Mortimer Wheeler. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press (1968). Plate XXVI: ‘‘Mohenjo-daro: Gold and SteatiteNecklaces’’



We do not claim the last word on this research; there is much more tobe done understanding and interpreting the illustrative practices of archae-ologists. For instance, what is behind the convention of illustrated projec-tile points always projecting ‘‘up’’ on the page (and where does this vary)?Who uses numbers to impersonally identify artifacts on complicated pho-tographic plates and who assigns letters of the alphabet? Are these practicesand behaviors limited to predominately Anglo-American English-languageperiodicals and publications? Will a broader and more inclusive worldarchaeology provide confirmation and new insights? We can only wait andwonder.

But armed with our new awareness, and with the rigorous stimulating,revolutionary teachings of our mentor, H. Martin Wobst, we are preparedto lead the brigade for material interferences… toothbrushes, dental floss,

Figure 25. Faces in the Strangest Places, originally published in Omni Magazine.

National Enquirer 1986:52



Figure 26. Electrical Outlet. 21st century manufactured anomie

Figure 27. Mop. It is what it is



braces, lipstick, whatever…to bring out those brilliant smiles of apprecia-tion for one who can’t be over-esteemed.

Acknowledgments

This research on the materiality of happiness began more than 30 yearsago when the two authors were graduate students at the University of Mas-sachusetts, taking seminars from H. Martin Wobst. It was Stephen whofirst started to notice images such as the ones we discuss here, and Joanwas charmed. So we married and here, after many years, is the outcome ofour continued joint research on the topic. We wish to acknowledge andthank Martin for his ceaseless inspiration, support and enthusiasm, hisencouragement to read widely in disparate literatures and languages, hishumor, imagination and forbearance, then and now, now and then.Thanks also to our two anonymous reviewers—Bob Paynter and SusanKus—for helpful tips; they remain faceless if not nameless; thanks as wellto the truly anonymous reviewer. And a tip-of-the-hat to colleagues andfriends Claudine Scoville, Ruth Trocolli, Diane Gifford-Gonzales and Doro-thy Lippert for encouragement and contributions. Neither they, nor Mar-tin, can be implicated in the interpretations presented here, unless the guiltis by association, alas inescapable.

Notes

1. Whimsy does not figure significantly in the documentation of archaeologicalsites and features, see however the giant squirrel hidden in the foliage of theoblique perspective drawing of the Poverty Point site in Louisiana (Ford andWebb 1956, Figure 2).

2. This image is both the earliest published arti-face—1875—that we have beenable to locate, as well as being the depiction of the oldest artifacts, more than15,000 years old.

References

Brooks, Arthur C.2012. Why Conservatives are Happier than Liberals. The New York Times Sun-

day Review July 8:6.

Ford, James A. and Clarence H. Webb1956. Poverty Point, a Late Archaic Site in Louisiana. Anthropological Papers Vol-

ume 46(1). American Museum of Natural History, New York.



Kuhn, Thomas1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press,

Chicago.

Pew Research Center2006. Are We Happy Yet? A Social Trends Report. http://pewresearch.org/

assets/social/pdf/AreWeHappyYet.pdf.

Tringham, Ruth E.1991. Households with Faces: The Challenge of Gender in Prehistoric Architec-

tural Remains. In Engendering Archaeology, edited by Joan Gero and Mar-garet Conkey. Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge, pp. 93–131.

Trumble, Angus2004. A Brief History of the Smile. Basic Books, New York.

Wobst, H. Martin1977. Stylistic Behavior and Information Exchange. In For the Director: Research

Essays in Honor of James B. Griffin. Anthropological Papers of theMuseum of Anthropology, University of Michigan 61:317–342.

1999. Style in Archaeology or Archaeologists in Style. In Material Meanings: Criti-cal Approaches to the Interpretation of Material Culture, edited by ElizabethS. Chilton. The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 118–132.



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The Evolution of Happiness (with Stephen Loring)

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