The Archaeology of Plural and Changing Identities

As people move through life, they continually shift affiliation from one position to another, dependent on the wider contexts of their interactions. Different forms of material culture may be employed as affiliations shift, and the connotations of any given set of artifacts may change. In this volume the authors explore these overlapping spheres of social affiliation. Social actors belong to multiple identity groups at any moment in their life. It is possible to deploy one or many potential labels in describing the identities of such an actor. Two main axes exist upon which we can plot experiences of social belonging ? the synchronic and the diachronic. Identities can be understood as multiple during one moment (or the extended moment of brief interaction), over the span of a lifetime, or over a specific historical trajectory.