| Summary: | <p>Archaeology involves the comparison of one thing with another, using intuition or measurements to distinguish variation at different levels of detail. This thesis makes the case for the centrality of typology, the relations between things, to archaeological theory, advancing a multi-layered typology designed to analyse different kinds of question. I define three levels: the ‘variant’, useful to study production, the ‘group’, meaningful for consumption, and the ‘super-group’, relevant to identity. By contrast, traditional typologies, fixed and mono-level, tend to mask information they render impossible to analyse. My typology replaces the seminal work of Blinkenberg (1926) <em>Fibules Grecques et Orientales</em> as well as combining several regional <em>Prähistorische Bronzefunde</em> typologies (Caner 1983; Kilian 1975; Sapouna-Sakellarakis 1978) into one scheme. The work incorporates 10,000 fibulae from the Aegean and Anatolia into 1,202 variants, 259 groups, and 53 super-groups from the 12th to the 5th century BC.</p> <p>The first half of the thesis presents the historiography of fibula study, the new typology, and the nominal data. Notable is the dramatic increase in fibula count and diversity in the 8th and 7th century, as well as shift from cemetery to sanctuary dedications, followed by their all but total disappearance by the 6th century. The second half is concerned with style, degrees of similarity, and what stylistic variation is for. A network analysis of shared-presence is shown to be subject to serious flaws; whilst an export network based on a manufacture test is much more promising. A diversity analysis of site assemblages and profile-group variation is employed to reveal divergences of use, practice, and dress style. Why the variety in the 8th and 7th century? An argument is advanced that variety is produced to achieve humankind’s ends as loci of distributed personhood and cognition. I end with positing the part fibulae played in the various subsystems of extended minds.</p>
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