Primary Orality in the Archaeological Context

The American sociologist Carl Couch titled his 1989 paper with a critical question which deserves far more attention than it has to date received. He asked: ‘Oral technologies: a cornerstone of ancient civilizations?’ (1989). Couch went on to write that ‘[i]f only a limited amount of information is available, a highly differentiated society cannot emerge nor be sustained’ (1989, p. 588). In a later work, Couch argued ‘that all preliterate ancient societies with a complex social structure made extensive use of orality to preserve information’ (Couch 1996, p. 29). The cross-cultural generalisations developed over the subsequent chapters indicate that not only are Couch’s arguments of the essence, but that the fundamental role of oral technologies can be detected in the archaeological record. The British archaeologist Colin Renfrew writes that we ‘need to understand more adequately the mechanisms of learning, and the way we humans manage to store what we have learnt’ (2007, p. 107). In light of the goal that Renfrew sets, it is hoped that the analysis offered here may be of value to archaeologists. Whether talking about contemporary non-literate cultures, contemporary literate cultures, or speculating about oral cultures in the distant past, the sociopolitical cohesion of the society must depend on the media used to communicate and store information. As McLuhan argues, social and cultural changes can only be understood through the workings of media used to