Comment on A. C.

Spaulding, "Statistical Techniques for the Discovery of Artifact

Types"

James A. Ford

American Antiquity, Vol. 19, No. 4. (Apr., 1954), pp. 390-391.

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wrapped spirally around the copper beads. Small bits the hack, with the legs to the right. The head was
of fine fur were adhering to the copper. T h e bones arranged to the west, which is downstream of the
and heads were sent to the county coroner, William Coeur d'Alene River. A kneecap and some phalanges,
Wood of Coeur dlAlene, who passed the find on to apparently part of the hurial, were found distrlrhed, in
the Junior College. Position and orientat~on are not the same stratum but 3 to 8 inches from their original
known. location. The head was apparently higher than the rest
10Kt5 (h-1). In 1950 a group of glacial boulders, of the hody, but the original position had been lost. O n e
individually 5 in. to 10 in. in diameter, was ohserved of the bones of the right forearm was broken, the
at Ross Point, near Post Falls, Idaho. These were packed break b e ~ n gdiscolored by the soil, but it is difficult to say
tightly together, about 20 feet from the edge of a bluff just when the break occurred.
overlooking the Spokane River. The stones were partially Manv of the ribs were broken and folded hack into
obscured by settl~nginto the clay, plus a covering of the chest cavity. The left hand and wrist were entirely
pine needles. T h ~ w s as presumed to he a burial marker, missing although the bones of the forearm were perfectly
and the information was filed at the Junior College. preserved. The right hand may also have been missing.
Later the marker was discovered after a small forest The skull showed no signs of violence.
tire had burned off the pine needles. The finders sup- Under the left elbow of this hurial was a piece of
posed the marker to he connected with buried treasure decayed wood 17 inches long. There was elusive evi-
and dug through the burial looking for it. W h e n the dence that the burial was wrapped in skin or matting.
Junior College was notified only the skull was left In Rodger Heglar, of the U n ~ v e r s ~ tofy Washington, has
5 1 t u . 1: was cleared and photographed. Fragmentary made osteological analys~s of the burials. His metric
hones, possibly phalanges, were ohserved heneath the comparisons show the specimens to he well within
skull. The hurial was reportedly about 27 in.ches below the range of the Upper Columbia skeletal material,
the surface, flexed, on the left side, with the head to w ~ t hdental wear typical of Plateau peoples, the most
the southwest, which is downstream of the Spokane wear on the first molars. Periap~cal abscesses were
River at that point. Apparently there were no associa- present in two cases and a possible peridontal infection
tions other than the marker. in another, which he reports 1s common In the Plateau.
lOKt2l (h-1). In 1950 a resident of Medimont, Idaho, None of the usual arthritis was noted, and no cranial
brought to the Junior College the skull which he had deformat~on. The stature of the only complete meaaur-
removed from a sandpit in a ploughed field on his farm, able skeleton was 162-164 cm., reportedly well within the
whlch is near the shore of Cave Lake, between the lake LJpper Columbia range. Where information was ava~l-
and the nearby Coeur d'Alene River. The spot where able, burials appear to he flexed with the orientation
the skull had heen removed was left alone until the rest poshihly related to the direct~on of flow of the nearest
of the burial could be properly excavated. In 1951, the river
hurial was excavated, photographed, and sketched. Some Tuu 0.MILLER,
JK.

of the hones were of the consistency of burned paper, Dcpartment of Anthropology

but dried hard in the sun. The burial was 21 inches Universiry of Washington

from the surface in a fill of unstratified sandy soil, Scattle, Washington

lust helow the plough line (marked hy humus). The

sand was lakeshore deposit. This burial was flexed, on COMhIENT O N A. C. SPALJLDING,
"STATISTICAL TECHNIQUES FOR THE
DISCOVERY O F ARTIFACT TYPES" "
First let me say that I am thoroughly sympathetic to
all efforts toward development of more accurate method-
ology. But the application of statistics and other
techniques to our problems, without regard for basic
crllture theory, cannot he regarded as an advance in
technique.
For years there have been arguments as to whether
cr~ltural types - pottery types to be specific - were
pre-existing units in culture history that could he dis-
covered hy a good archaeologist and missed by an
incompetent one. I have been on the negative side
in these debates-which arise, it seems to me, because
people are talking about two different things.
It is well known that any given culture is a classl-
ficatory device which offers its bearers patterned ways
of meeting the problems of existence. Not only are

Flc; 111. Blade associated with 10Ktl. " Ame7ii-u,i Antiqitrtr, Vul. 18, N o . 3, 1953
 FACTS A N D COhthtEXTS 39 1

there categories of correct ways to dress, dance, talk, and need not be detailed here-why this should be so.
solve the mother-in-law problem, but also there are There are n o inevitable, necessary breaks which will
proper ways to manufacture food vessels, water con- force the classifier to cut this ceramic distribution into
tainers, cooking pots, etc. This is the patterning that segments. However, diffusion does not operate un-
is found imposed o n the sherds in any time level i n a affected by other factors. W h e n enough information
village dump. T h e degree to which cultures allow is available, it will doubtless be found that rate of
variation in patterning varies widely from one culture change in this pattern unit across geography was speeded
to another; at different times; and from one aspect of up by competition with other cultural forms or by
the culture to another. T h e flexibility of the styles in natural, political, or linguistic boundaries. Also, change
Weeden Island is in contrast to the rather rigid pattern- was probably slowed by movements of people, or routes
ing of Caddoan or h4ississippian ceramics. of easy communication.
Spaulding's suggestion that statistical analysis of the After chronology is well under control, it may be
patterning to be found in a collection from a village site possible occasionally to associate recognizable units of
will establish pottery types useful in study of culture ceramic pattern with tribes as Ritchie and MacNeish
history is amazingly naive. It will reveal the relative have recently done. However, there is no inherent
degree to which the people conformed to their set reason why such divisions must coincide.
of ceramic styles at one time and lace, but that is all Similar change can be seen in the cordmarking tradi-
it will do. Whether this information about ceramics tion as it is viewed through time. For example, there
is worth the work, I hesitate to say. However, it should is a drift from large to fine cords. Here, too, there were
be pointed out that Spaulding is advising the use of doubtless periods of acceleration and deceleration in
data in which variation due to the degree of conform- change due to a variety of possible factors. However,
ance to standards is welded to variation due to style there are n o natural inevitable factors operating that will
change with time. Such studies could be better made establish neat segments in this change. Replacements
after the chronology is controlled. of populations will cause sudden breaks in the culture
T h e search for the natural units in culture history, history of Fulton County, Illinois, but that is another
which still haunts the work of archaeologists, is directly matter.
analogous to the early 19th century biologist's faith in T o set up historically useful type units in a tradition
immutable species following one another in orderly such as is represented by cordmarked pottery, I can see
procession down the misty corridors of geological time. no wav to avoid detailed comparisons made site to site
Surely it is time we progressed beyond cataclysmic and through time. Also necessary is a wary awareness
archaeology where deposits representing each period are that it is the date and geographical position of the site
separated by layers of clean white sand. W e now have which you chance to dig that give the association of
techniques by which cultural development can be features that look so significant. Had your site been
studied. a hundred miles to the north and a hundred years
Patterning is not the central problem of typology, earlier, "Klankenburg Cordmarked" would have been
rather it is the framework in which the problem of slightly different - a category into whi,ch one could
setting up measures of time-change and geographical place only about half the sherds now called by that
space-change of each unit of the pattern have to be name.
JAMES A . FORD
solved.
American Museum of Natural Ifistory
T o try to make this clear, I will discuss an actual
New York, N . Y .
situation. It is well known that a ceramic association
May, 1953
consisting of a grit-tempered ware with a range of
conoidal-base shapes and cordmarked decoration forms
a fairly stable unit of the patterning that is found at REPLY T O FORD
a number of village sites in the northeastern United Ford's objections to the ideas advanced in "Statistical
States. Let us make the entirely unwarranted assumption Techniques for the Discovery of Artifact Types" appear
that we can view the distribution of this association to revolve around (1) the notion that use of such
of features at the year A.D. 700. AS w e cross geographical techniques somehow constitutes a denial of continuous
space to the southward, it will be seen that change variation of culture in time and space and (2) certain
took place in the "mean" - or we might say "ideal" - implicit definitions of such terms as "artifact type" and
about which the actual specimens cluster. In Kentucky "historical usefulness" which in effect make their use
and Tennessee, grit is replaced with sand tempering; the exclusive prerogative of the archaeologist engaged
clay tempering appears in northern Alabama, and in inferring chronology by ranking sites or components
becomes the rule in the lower Mississippi \'alley. Form of sites in order of likeness as judged by relative fre-
changes from conoidal to rounded to flat base. Similar quency of attribute combinations. I shall attempt to
minor changes can be seen in the application of the show that the first objection is a gratuitous error and
surface finish. that the second is no more than a semantic quagmire.
Change of these associated traits tends to be gradual T h e issues involved can be clarified by describing three
as space is crossed, and there is a good reason - which levels of organization of artifacts with respect to the