Archaeology

Archaeology is a jargon-free and accessible introduction to the field which details how
archaeologists study the human past in all its fascinating diversity. Now in its twelfth
edition, this classic textbook has been updated to reflect the latest research and new
findings in the field. Reflecting the global scope of the discipline, the book has a truly
international coverage of important discoveries and sites from many corners of the
globe. Individual chapters examine archaeology and its history, considering the role
of the archaeologist and how they discover, investigate and classify sites and artifacts.
This journey through archaeology also includes a discussion of important individuals
and groups, and explores some of the ways archaeologists attempt to explain major
social and cultural changes in the remote past. Archaeology ends with an outline of the
complex world of cultural resource management and gives invaluable advice on how
to become an archaeologist. Richly illustrated throughout, this popular and engaging
textbook on archaeological methods has introduced generations of students to the
captivating world of archaeology.

Brian M. Fagan is one of the world’s leading archaeological writers and an internation-
ally recognized authority on world prehistory. He is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology
at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Nadia Durrani is a Cambridge University-trained archaeologist and writer, with a

Ph.D. from University College London in Arabian archaeology. She is former editor of
Britain’s best-selling archaeology magazine, Current World Archaeology and has authored
and edited many articles and books on archaeology from every corner of the globe.
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Archaeology
A Brief Introduction

TWELFTH EDITION

Brian M. Fagan
and
Nadia Durrani
Twelfth edition published 2016
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 B. M. Fagan (as the Lindbriar Corporation) and N. Durrani
The right of Brian M. Fagan (as the Lindbriar Corporation) and Nadia Durrani
to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
Previously published by Pearson Education, Inc. 2003, 2006, 2009, 2012
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Names: Fagan, Brian M., author. | Durrani, Nadia, author.
Title: Archaeology / Brian M. Fagan and Nadia Durrani.
Description: Twelfth edition. | New York : Routledge, 2016. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015042822 | ISBN 9781138190313 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Archaeology.
Classification: LCC CC165. F28 2016 | DDC 930.1–dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015042822
ISBN: 978-1-138-19031-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-64114-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Out of House Publishing
To Lucia, Karen, and other friends at Whittier College, who first gave BF
the idea for this book back in 1977. And, as usual, to BF’s cats, who were
as subversive as ever. They did everything to prevent him from revising
the manuscript by stepping on it with muddy paws and dancing intricate
ballet on the computer keyboard. As you can see, they failed!

Also dedicated to ND’s physicist father, Saeed Durrani, who thought

about becoming an archaeologist but was advised against it, by Mortimer
Wheeler, who told him: “My boy, use physics for the good of archae-
ology.” And so he went on to pioneer thermoluminescence and fission
track dating. Thanks for all the good years!
This page intentionally left blank
Brief Contents

1 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations: The Birth of a Science 1

2 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory 29

3 Culture and Context 56

4 Explaining the Past 76

5 Space and Time 100

6 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There: The Process of

Research and Finding Archaeological Sites 127

7 Excavation 155

8 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies 184

9 The Present and the Past 214

10 Ancient Climate and Environment 238

11 Come Tell Me How You Lived 259

12 Settlement and Landscape 280

13 The Archaeology of People 305

14 Managing the Past 337

15 So You Want to Become an Archaeologist? 357

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Contents

List of Figures and Tables xvii

Preface xxiii
Acknowledgments xxvi
Authors’ Note xxvii

1 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations: The Birth of a Science 1

Discovery Tutankhamun’s Tomb, Egypt, 1922 5
What Is Archaeology? 6
The Beginnings of Archaeology 6
The Three Ages and the Antiquity of Humankind 8
The Discovery of the Ancient Civilizations 11
The Ancient Egyptians 11
The Assyrians and Sumerians 12
Troy and Mycenae 15
Asia: Scrolls and Shoulder Blades 17
African Phoenicians? 18
Early American Archaeology 19
The “Moundbuilders” 19
Maya Civilization 20
Southwestern Archaeology and the Direct Historical Approach 21
Diversity, Diffusion, and Human Progress 22
“From Them to Us”: Unilinear Evolution 23
Diffusionism: How Did Civilization Spread? 23
The Development of Modern Scientific Archaeology 24
Scientific Excavation 24
Archaeology and Ecology 25
Scientific Methods 25
“From Them to Us”: Contemporary Archaeological Theory 25
Ecological/Evolutionary Approaches 26
Historical Materialist Approaches 26
Summary 27
Questions for Discussion 28
Further Reading 28
x Contents
2 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory 29
The Tourist, the Collector, and the Archaeologist 31
Discovery The Jamestown Settlement 31
Who Needs and Owns the Past? 34
What Do Archaeologists Do? 39
Anthropology, Archaeology, and History 39
Archaeologists on the Job 40
Many Sites, Many Archaeologists 41
Why Does Archaeology Matter? 42
Mysteries of the Past 44
A Sideline: Pseudoarchaeology 45
Archaeology and Human Diversity 45
Archaeology as a Political Tool 47
Archaeology and Economic Development 48
The Irresistible Lure of the Past 49
The Prehistory of Humankind According to Archaeologists 50
Early Prehistory 51
The Origins and Spread of Modern Humans 53
The Origins of Food Production 53
The Origins of States (Civilizations) 54
European Expansion 54
Summary 55
Questions for Discussion 55
Further Reading 55

3 Culture and Context 56

Human Culture 57
Discovery The Lords of Sicán, Peru, A.D. 900–1100 57
Cultural Systems 60
Culture Change 64
The Goals of Archaeology 66
Stewardship: Preserving the Past 66
Constructing Culture History 68
Reconstructing Ancient Lifeways 68
Explaining Cultural and Social Change 69
Understanding the Archaeological Record 70
The Archaeological Record 70
Archaeological Sites 70
Artifacts, Features, and Ecofacts 72
Context 74
Summary 75
Questions for Discussion 75
Further Reading 75
 Contents xi
4 Explaining the Past 76
Interpretation of Culture History 78
Invention 79
Discovery Deciphering Hopewell (c. 200 B.C. to A.D. 400) 79
Diffusion 82
Migration 83
Noncultural Models 85
Genetics and DNA 86
Ecological/Environmental (Processual) Archaeology 87
Systems and Cultural Ecology 87
Multilinear Cultural Evolution 88
Historical Materialist Approaches 88
Cognitive-Processual Archaeology 90
Archaeological Theory Today and Tomorrow: “Processual Plus” 93
Multidisciplinary Perspectives 94
Alternative Histories 94
DNA Studies 94
Ecology and Evolutionary Theory 95
Understanding the Role of the Human Mind 95
External and Internal Constraints 96
A General Theoretical Framework? 98
Summary 98
Questions for Discussion 99
Further Reading 99

5 Space and Time 100

Space 102
The Law of Association 103
Assemblages and Subassemblages 103
Time 105
Linear and Cyclical Time 107
Relative Chronology 108
The Law of Superposition 108
Artifacts and Relative Chronology 110
Cross-Dating 111
Obsidian Hydration 112
Absolute Chronology 112
Historical Records and Objects of Known Age 113
Tree-Ring Dating (Dendrochronology) 114
Chronometric Chronology 117
Radiocarbon Dating 117
Luminescence Dating 121
Electronic Spin Resonance 122
Uranium Series Dating 122
xii Contents
Potassium-Argon Dating 122
Fission Track Dating 123
Discovery Eruption at Akrotiri, Greece, 1967 124
Summary 125
Questions for Discussion 125
Further Reading 125

6 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There: The Process of

Research and Finding Archaeological Sites 127
The Process of Archaeological Research 129
Design and Formulation 129
Implementation 131
Data Acquisition 131
Processing and Analysis 132
Discovery The Nubian Kings of Kerma, Sudan, Early First
Millennium B.C. 132
Interpretation 133
Publication 133
Stages of Archaeological Fieldwork 134
Accidental Discovery 134
Remote Sensing, or Archaeological Survey in the Laboratory 137
Google Earth 138
Aircraft and Satellite Imagery 138
Aerial Photography 142
Archaeological Survey at Ground Level 143
Sampling and Archaeological Survey 146
Recording Archaeological Sites 147
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) 148
Assessing Archaeological Sites 150
Surface Collection 150
Subsurface Detection Methods 151
Discovery Remote Sensing at Stonehenge, England 152
Summary 154
Questions for Discussion 154
Further Reading 154

7 Excavation 155
Planned Excavation: Research Design 156
Discovery The Princess of Khok Phanom Di, Thailand, 1984 157
Types of Excavation 161
Site Testing 162
The Process of Dissection 163
Vertical and Horizontal Excavation 165
Digging, Tools, and People 168
Recording 170
 Contents xiii
Stratigraphic Observation 170
Excavation Problems 173
Open Campsites and Villages 173
Caves and Rockshelters 173
Mound Sites 174
Earthworks and Forts 176
Shell Middens 177
Ceremonial and Other Specialist Sites 178
Burials and Cemeteries 180
Reburial and Repatriation 181
Summary 183
Questions for Discussion 183
Further Reading 183

8 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies 184

Back from the Field 186
Classification and Taxonomy 186
Discovery Exotic Islanders: Homo floresiensis 188
Typology 190
Archaeological Types 191
The Concept of Types 195
Attributes and Types of Types 196
What Do Assemblages and Artifact Patternings Mean? 199
Units of Ordering 201
Components and Phases 201
Larger Archaeological Units 203
Ancient Technologies 203
Stone 204
Clay 206
Metals and Metallurgy 208
Bone, Wood, Basketry, and Textiles 210
Summary 212
Questions for Discussion 213
Further Reading 213

9 The Present and the Past 214

Discovery Ancient Pacific Navigation 216
The Archaeological Record Again 217
Site-Formation Processes 218
Preservation 220
Favorable Preservation Conditions 223
Middle-Range Theory and the Archaeological Record 226
The Living Past 228
Ethnographic Analogy 229
xiv Contents
Living Archaeology (Ethnoarchaeology) 231
The !Kung San 231
Maya Metates 232
Nunamiut Eskimos 233
Tucson, Arizona: Modern Material Culture and Garbage 233
Experimental Archaeology 235
Summary 236
Questions for Discussion 236
Further Reading 236

10 Ancient Climate and Environment 238

Discovery Moche Human Sacrifice and El Niño, Huaca de la Luna,
Peru, Sixth to Seventh Century A.D. 239
Short-Term and Long-Term Climatic Change 241
Long-Term Climatic Change: The Great Ice Age 241
Deep-Sea Cores and Ice Cores 242
The Pleistocene Framework 244
Pollen Analysis 247
Short-Term Climatic Change: The Holocene 249
Centuries-Long Changes: The Younger Dryas and the Black Sea 249
Short-Term Climatic Change: El Niño 250
The Moche Civilization 251
Tree Rings: Studying Southwestern Drought 253
Geoarchaeology 256
Summary 257
Questions for Discussion 257
Further Reading 258

11 Come Tell Me How You Lived 259

Evidence for Subsistence 260
Ancient Diet 260
Discovery The Göbekli Tepe Carvings, Turkey, 1994 262
Animal Bones 264
Faunal Analysis (Zooarchaeology) 265
Comparing Bone Assemblages 265
Species Abundance and Cultural Change 268
Game Animals 268
Domesticated Animals 269
Ancient Butchery 269
Plant Remains 272
Birds, Fish, and Mollusks 275
Rock Art 277
Summary 277
Questions for Discussion 278
Further Reading 279
 Contents xv
12 Settlement and Landscape 280
Settlement Patterns 283
Households 284
Discovery Households at Marki, Cyprus, c. 2200 B.C. 287
Communities 289
Distribution of Communities 292
Geographic Information Systems and Roman Wroxeter, England 294
Population 296
The Archaeology of Landscapes 296
Sacred Landscapes: Mirrors of the Intangible 299
Maeshowe and the Stones of Stenness 300
Summary 304
Questions for Discussion 304
Further Reading 304

13 The Archaeology of People 305

Studying the Deceased: Bioarchaeology 307
Sex and Age 307
Malnutrition, Stress, and Work-Related Injuries 308
Violence 310
Strontium and People’s Lives 310
Individuals 311
Discovery The Ice Man of the Alps, c. 2400 B.C. 311
Groups 314
Social Ranking 315
Ethnicity and Social Inequality 316
Gender 321
The Engendered Past 322
Wider Society: Prestate and State Societies 324
Interactions: Trade and Exchange 325
Types of Trade 325
Studying Ancient Trade: Sourcing 328
Long-Distance Trade and the Uluburun Ship 329
Interactions: Religious Beliefs 330
Studying Religion and Ideology 332
Summary 335
Questions for Discussion 336
Further Reading 336

14 Managing the Past 337

Legislating the Past 339
Discovery African American Burial Ground, New York City, 1991 339
What Is Protected? 341
Laws Some Cultural Resource Management Legislation in the
United States, 1960 Onward 342
xvi Contents
Assessment, Mitigation, and Compliance 344
Phase 1: Identification and Preliminary Assessment 344
Phase 2: Assessing Significance 345
Phase 3: Management Plans and Mitigation 345
Management versus Research 345
Strategies of CRM Research 347
Geomorphology 348
Safety 348
Technology 349
Management Challenges 349
Issues of Quality 349
The Issue of Site Records 350
The Issue of Curation 350
The Issue of Publication and Dissemination 351
Native Americans and CRM 352
Public Archaeology 352
Archaeological Tourism 353
Summary 355
Questions for Discussion 356
Further Reading 356

15 So You Want to Become an Archaeologist? 357

Archaeology as a Profession 358
Deciding to Become an Archaeologist 359
Gaining Fieldwork Experience 360
Career Opportunities 361
Academic Qualifications and Graduate School 362
Thoughts on Not Becoming a Professional Archaeologist 363
Our Responsibilities to the Past 365
A Simple Code of Archaeological Ethics for All 366
Summary 367
Further Reading 367

Sites and Cultures Mentioned in the Text 368

Glossary of Technical Terms 375
References 385
Index 386
Figures and Tables

Figures
1.1 A reconstruction of the burial ceremony at the Royal Cemetery at Ur 4
1.2 Archaeologist Howard Carter cleans the sarcophagus of pharaoh
Tutankhamun 5
1.3 Bronze Age barrows (burial mounds) near Stonehenge, England 8
1.4 A Thomas Nast cartoon from the British humor magazine Punch
lampooning Charles Darwin’s linking of apes to humans 10
1.5 Austen Henry Layard’s workmen recover a human-headed lion from an
Assyrian palace at Nimrud, Iraq 13
1.6 Gertrude Bell 14
1.7 Sophia Schliemann 15
1.8 A painting from the Caves of a Thousand Buddhas, Dunhuang, China 16
1.9 The Great Enclosure at Great Zimbabwe 18
1.10 Frederick Catherwood’s painting of the Maya center at Tulum, Yucatán,
Mexico 21
1.11 Pecos Pueblo with the ruins of a Spanish colonial church built close to
ancient Pueblo kivas (subterranean chambers) 22
2.1 Excavating one of the colonist’s house of Jamestown 32
2.2 The pyramids of Giza in Egypt 34
2.3 The archaeological sites mentioned in this book 35
2.4 A great bull on the walls of Lascaux Cave, painted about 17,000 years ago 38
2.5 The Parthenon in Athens 42
2.6 A mannequin wears the full regalia of a Moche lord of Sipán, northern
coastal Peru, c. A.D. 400 43
2.7 Grotte de Chauvet, France: Horses and a woolly rhinoceros painted
some 24,000 to 31,000 years ago by Cro-Magnon artists 44
2.8 The amphitheater at Epidauros, Greece 49
2.9 Two hominins of the species Australopithecus afarensis walk across a soft
bed of volcanic ash at Laetoli, Tanzania, 3.5 million years ago 52
3.1 Reconstructed gold mask of a lord of Sicán, Peru 58
3.2 Hopewell bird claw in mica 62
3.3 A wooden burial house from Leubingen, Germany 63
3.4 Burial chamber of a lord of Sipán, Peru 64
3.5 Changing automobile styles 65
3.6 Three primary scholarly goals of archaeology 67
xviii Figures and Tables
3.7 The Acropolis complex at Copán, Honduras, as drawn by Tatiana
Proskouriakoff 71
3.8 Mimbres painted vessel from the American Southwest showing a big
horn sheep 73
4.1 A circular Hopewell mound and earthworks at Mound City National
Monument, Ohio 81
4.2 Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s iron-bladed dagger, also a gold dagger, both
from his tomb, c. 1323 B.C. 82
4.3 The spread of a culture trait in time and space: the cone effect 83
4.4 A Chavín shaman transforms himself into a jaguar. From Chavín de
Huantar, Peru 84
4.5 Reconstruction of the Veracruz enclave at Teotihuacán, Mexico 85
4.6 Angkor Wat, Cambodia, A.D. 1117 93
4.7 Moche gold ear ornament in hammered gold from the tomb of a
lord of Sipán 97
5.1 The law of association 104
5.2 Burial groups divided into chronological groups by assessing associated
artifacts 105
5.3 An iron arrowhead embedded in the backbone of a British warrior
killed during a battle with Roman soldiers at Maiden Castle, England,
in A.D. 43 106
5.4 The relative chronology of the cat called the Venerable Bede 109
5.5 The principle of superposition 110
5.6 Gravestones from around the time of the American Revolution from
Shirley, Massachusetts, showing the cherub motif, which was most
popular between 1780 and 1789 112
5.7 A classic pottery style seriation from the Tehuacán Valley, Mexico,
showing many sites ordered into a single sequence 113
5.8 Major chronological methods in prehistory 114
5.9 Building a tree-ring chronology 115
5.10 Pueblo Bonito, New Mexico, a large Southwestern pueblo built and
occupied between about A.D. 850 and 1130 116
5.11 The principle of the radiocarbon dating method: production,
distribution, and decay of C-14 118
5.12 Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating 119
5.13 Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania 123
5.14 Two-story houses perfectly preserved under volcanic ash at Akrotiri,
Santorini Island, Aegean Sea, Greece. The site is protected under a roof
for tourists 124
6.1 The process of archaeological research 130
6.2 A royal tomb at Kerma, Sudan. People rush to complete the mound as
burial takes place 133
6.3 Clovis Paleo-Indian points from the Great Plains of North America 135
6.4 A reconstruction of the central precinct of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán,
with the great pyramid of the sun god Huitzilopochtli and the rain deity
Tlaloc to the left 136
 Figures and Tables xix
6.5 Some of the 15,234 gold and silver coins from a late Roman hoard of the
late fourth century A.D. 137
6.6 The Jackson Stairway at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico 140
6.7 An illustration of LIDAR ‘removing’ vegetation cover around the
eighth- to ninth-century A.D. mountain-temple of Rong Chen, in the
Kulen Mountains, to the north of Angkor 141
6.8 Long-forgotten earthworks and burial mounds revealed by
dark crop marks 143
6.9 Olive trees in Greece. Olive oil was a staple of ancient trade and
exchange across the eastern Mediterranean world 146
6.10 Tools of the trade used by the Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project,
used to produce three-dimensional images of what lies
below the surface 152
6.11 The henge-like monument with its large pits, perhaps holding wooden
uprights, and ditches revealed by cutting-edge geophysical survey 153
7.1 Excavation at Khok Phanom Di, Thailand. The site yielded not only
spectacular burials but important evidence for early rice cultivation 158
7.2 Excavations at Mound A, Shiloh Mound Complex, Tennessee 160
7.3 Flow chart of the organization of an archaeological excavation 161
7.4 A line of test pits at Quirigua, Guatemala, a Maya ceremonial center 162
7.5 Excavations under a high-rise building in the heart of the city of London 163
7.6 Mortimer Wheeler-style excavation using baulks and boxes at the Jinhsa
site near Chengdu, China, c. 1000 B.C. 165
7.7 Vertical excavation on a British Iron Age hill fort and its fortifications
in 1937 167
7.8 A reconstruction of an Iroquois longhouse from Ontario, Canada 168
7.9 Pithouses and courtyard groups at the Grewe site, Arizona 169
7.10 Recording under ideal (grossly simplified) conditions 171
7.11 Dating the construction and the destruction of a building at Colonial
Williamsburg, Virginia, by its associated artifacts 172
7.12 Excavations on a hominin site at Bouri in Ethiopia’s arid Afar Depression 174
7.13 Klasies River Cave, South Africa 175
7.14 Streets and houses at Mohenjodaro, with the citadel in the background.
A city of the Indus civilization, Pakistan, c. 1700 B.C. 176
7.15 The Iron Age hill fort at Maiden Castle, southern England 177
7.16 Australian Aboriginal shell mound, Tarkine coast, Tasmania 178
7.17 Teotihuacán, Mexico, looking down the Street of the Dead from the
summit of the Pyramid of the Moon, with the Pyramid of the Sun at left 179
7.18 Involuntary burial. Earthquake victims at the Roman port of Kourion,
Cyprus, killed in a giant temblor in A.D. 265 180
8.1 Classifying a potsherd collection. The basic stages of simple classification 187
8.2 Artist’s reconstruction of Homo floresiensis 189
8.3 Some common attributes of a clay vessel 191
8.4 Fine Pomo Indian basket being made in northern California 193
8.5 Tlingit wooden mask from the Northwest Coast 194
8.6 An Oldowan “chopping tool” 194
xx Figures and Tables
8.7 A Chavín carving on a pillar in the temple interior at Chavín de
Huantar, Peru 195
8.8 11,000-year-old Mesolithic artifacts from Star Carr, England 197
8.9 Early Bronze Age Scandinavian flint daggers, c. 2000 to 1500 B.C. 198
8.10 Aztec warriors wearing elaborate uniforms signifying different ranks 199
8.11 Archaeological units in use 202
8.12 Three views of an Acheulian stone ax from Swanscombe on the River
Thames, England 203
8.13 The earliest stoneworking techniques 205
8.14 Hopi woman making pottery with clay coils, Oraibi Pueblo, Arizona, 1903 207
8.15 A Celtic Iron Age helmet from the bed of the River Thames in London 209
8.16 Two silver Inka llamas 210
8.17 Part of a cotton funerary textile from the Paracas Peninsula, Peru,
perhaps depicting a shaman in trance 212
9.1 Pacific navigation. The double-hulled Hokule’a off the island of
Oahu, Hawaii 216
9.2 The throne of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun 218
9.3 Site-formation processes 221
9.4 Plow marks on a cultivated field buried under a burial mound at South
Street, Avebury, England 223
9.5 Perfectly preserved moccasins 225
9.6 The head of Tollund Man, Denmark 226
9.7 A reconstruction of a trackway in the Somerset Levels, England 227
9.8 Bodies smothered at Pompeii, Italy, recovered from a cavity in the
volcanic ash with plaster of Paris 227
9.9 A Maya house at Cerén, El Salvador 228
9.10 A Fuegian (Ona) woman making a basket 230
9.11 A !Kung San brush shelter and windbreak in the Kalahari Desert,
southern Africa 232
9.12 Ramon Ramos Rosario making a stone metate 234
10.1 Decapitated human sacrifice victims, Huaca de la Luna, Peru 240
10.2 Deep-sea core from the Solomon Plateau 243
10.3 Provisional chronology and subdivisions of the Ice Age 244
10.4 Distribution of major ice sheets in Europe and North America during
the last Ice Age glaciation and the extent of land exposed by low sea levels 245
10.5 Map of the Bering Land Bridge 246
10.6 Pollen grains 247
10.7 A long-term pollen sequence for the Ice Age from Spain compared to
oxygen-isotope curves taken from a deep-sea core in the nearby Bay of
Biscay, showing the close correlation between the two 248
10.8 The worldwide effects of a strong El Niño, reconstructed on the basis of
the 1982–1983 event 251
10.9 The Moche pyramid known as Huaca del Sol, capital of powerful
Moche lords in the fifth century A.D 252
10.10 The climatic regimens of the American Southwest, showing the general
configuration of rainfall across the region reconstructed with tree rings 254
11.1 Ground stone ax with a modern wooden handle, location unknown 261
 Figures and Tables xxi
11.2 Göbekli Tepe, Turkey 262
11.3 Some of the factors that affect animal bones found in archaeological sites 266
11.4 A dog skeleton with the most important body parts labeled from the
bone identification point of view. A domestic ox jaw seen from below
(upper jaw) and above (lower jaw) 267
11.5 I dealized mortality data based on molar crowns of two common South
African mammals, the eland and the Cape buffalo 270
11.6 Recovering evidence for gathering and agriculture 273
11.7 Two Ancient Egyptian fishing boats raise a seine net on the Nile 278
12.1 Céide Fields, County Mayo, Ireland 282
12.2 Households and community: An artist’s impression of houses and
shrines from the town of Çatalhöyük, Turkey, in about 6000 B.C. 284
12.3 Plan of a house at Tierra Largas, Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, from
around 900 B.C., with selected artifacts plotted on the floor 286
12.4 Excavations at Abu Hureyra, Syria 287
12.5 House compounds at Marki, Cyprus 288
12.6 A reconstruction of the ziggurat temple at Eridu, Iraq 290
12.7 Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacán, Valley of Mexico 291
12.8 A site hierarchy in Mesoamerica 292
12.9 A simple example of site catchment analysis, not using GIS, from the
Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico 293
12.10 GIS data and the survey of Roman Wroxeter 295
12.11 L andscaping as a statement of power. The William Paca house,
Annapolis, Maryland 298
12.12 A LIDAR image of William Paca’s 1790s plantation, called
Wye Hall 299
12.13 A reconstructed hut at Skara Brae, Orkney Islands 301
12.14 The Stones of Stenness, Orkney Islands 302
12.15 Maeshowe burial mound, Orkney Islands, in the snow 303
13.1 A digital image of Tutankhamun reconstructed using facial
reconstruction methods 308
13.2 Some categories of information that can be gleaned from
human remains 309
13.3 The brutality of medieval warfare. A Towton soldier’s skull with a fatal
sword gash 311
13.4 A reconstruction of Ötzi the Ice Man wearing a grass cloak and
carrying his weapons 312
13.5 The mummy of Egyptian pharaoh Rameses II (1279–1212 B.C.) 314
13.6 The pharaoh Rameses III makes offerings to the scribe god Thoth in a
tomb in the Valley of the Queens, Luxor, Egypt 316
13.7 The central precincts at the Maya center at Tikal, Guatemala 317
13.8 A bronze couch on which the body of a 40-year-old chieftain lay, from
the richly adorned Iron Age burial at Hochdorf, Germany, dating to
about 550 B.C. 318
13.9 Reconstruction of a slave’s quarters, at Monticello, Virginia 319
13.10 An Aztec woman teaches her daughter how to weave 322
13.11 An Aztec obsidian mirror 326
xxii Figures and Tables
13.12 A camel caravan 327
13.13 Obsidian trade in the eastern Mediterranean region 328
13.14 Excavations on the Uluburun ship, southern Turkey 330
13.15 A haunting ancestral figurine from ‘Ain Ghazal, Jordan, dating to
c. 7500 B.C., one of the earliest religious objects in the world 331
13.16 The Great Serpent Mound, Hopewell, Adams County, Ohio, built by
the Mississippian people as a ceremonial earthwork 332
13.17 Four figures grouped deliberately to form a scene, found buried
beneath a house of about 1200 B.C. at San José Mogote, Oaxaca, Mexico 333
14.1 Early excavations on the African American burial ground in
New York City 340
14.2 Petroglyphs of humans, probably in trance, Coso Mountains, California 342
14.3 A sign demonstrating the protection of sites on federal land 343
14.4 CRM excavation goes on year-round. Excavations at the
Howorth-Nelson site in southwestern Pennsylvania 347
14.5 The palace and stairway of the Apadana at Persepolis, Iran 354
14.6 Archaeologists uncovering a medieval rest stop in the middle of a
village at Peissen, Germany 355
15.1 Stonehenge, Wiltshire, England 364
15.2 Two possibilities for the future of the past: Forks National Historic Site,
Manitoba, Canada and a looted Nazca cemetery on the Peruvian coast 365

Tables
2.1 Major developments in human prehistory 51
5.1  Changes in accuracy of C-14 dating over the past 10,000 years
generated from tree-ring calibrations 120
Preface

Archaeology is a romantic subject, redolent of lost civilizations and grinning skeletons

dripping with gold, the realm of pith-helmeted men and women who are adventur-
ers and scholars at the same time – of movies like the Indiana Jones adventures. But is
this reality? Most archaeologists have never worn a pith helmet, have never discovered
gold, and will never unearth a long-forgotten civilization. Nor do most archaeological
sites yield rich treasure or even human remains. The romance is not always there, but
the world of modern archaeology is deeply fascinating all the same. This book is a jour-
ney through that world in all its intriguing diversity. It is designed to give you some
idea of how archaeologists go about studying human behavior in the past.
This twelfth edition of Archaeology: A Brief Introduction is a brief narrative introduc-
tion to the fundamental principles of method and theory in archaeology, beginning with
the goals of archaeology, going on to consider the basic concepts of culture, time, and
space, and discussing the finding and excavation of archaeological sites. The last six
chapters summarize some of the ways in which archaeologists order and study their
finds, as well as the management of the past for future generations. Throughout the
book, we emphasize the ethics behind archaeology, ending with a discussion of careers
in archaeology and how we should act as stewards of the finite records of the human
past. This is a book with an ardently international perspective, for archaeology is the
most global of all sciences, encompassing all humanity, not just, say, North America
or Europe. To study archaeology solely from, say, a European, North American, or any
other vantage point is pointless. You miss so much.
Most readers will encounter this simple book as a supplement to an introductory
anthropology course or as part of a broader archaeology offering. It is designed for com-
plete beginners, so every attempt has been made to keep technical jargon to a minimum.
Inevitably, a book of this length and scope glosses over many complex problems and
smoldering controversies. We have proceeded on the assumption that, at this stage, a
positive overstatement is better than a complex piece of inconclusive reasoning. Errors
of overstatement can always be corrected in class or at a more advanced stage.
If there is a theme to this volume, it is that the patterning of archaeological artifacts
we find in the ground can provide valuable insights into human behavior in the past. In
pursuing this theme, we have attempted to focus on the basic concepts of archaeology
and leave the instructor to impose his or her own theoretical viewpoints on the various
chapters that follow. In the interests of simplicity, too, we have drawn again and again
on a few relatively well-known sites from New World and Old World archaeology, such
as Olduvai Gorge and Teotihuacán, rather than distracting readers with a multitude of
site names. Much of today’s archaeology comes under the heading of cultural resource
management (CRM) rather than purely academic research. In case any instructors are
wondering why this book emphasizes the academic over CRM, it is because the basic
xxiv Preface
principles of the subject are common to both kinds of research. We believe that the
reader is best served by discussions of well-known, classic sites, which he or she will
encounter during courses anyhow. We have added brief descriptions of major sites in a
special “Sites and Cultures” information section at the end of the book, where a glossary
of technical terms will also be found.

Highlights of the Twelfth Edition

This is an exciting time to be writing about archaeology because major scientific advances
in many fields are transforming our ability to reconstruct the remote past. Increasingly,
archaeology is becoming a multidisciplinary field, and the twelfth edition of this book
reflects this fact. In general, however, the book remains much the same because the basic
principles of archaeology remain unchanged through the years, whatever new theo-
retical approaches or high-tech scientific methods are brought to bear on the past. These
basic principles provide the foundation for all of the many research projects that archae-
ologists carry out, whether close to home or far afield, whether academic research or
cultural resource management. And generations of instructors and students have told
us that they like the current organization.

What’s New to This Edition

• New perceptions of archaeology. Chapter 4 includes a discussion of alternative per-
spectives on the past in archaeology, reflecting new thinking on this important topic
and an update on contemporary archaeological theory.
• Revised coverage of excavation methods. These are becoming increasingly refined as
archaeologists develop ever more sophisticated ways of dissecting sites.
• Expanded coverage of ancient technologies. In response to instructor and student
requests, coverage of ancient technologies has been expanded within the space lim-
its of the book.
• Expanded coverage of environment and climate. Chapter 10 summarizes ways in which
scientists study long-term and short-term climatic change. The study of ancient cli-
mate and its impact on ancient societies has been revolutionized in recent years and
reflects a major advance in archaeology.
• Discussion of settlement and landscape. Coverage of settlement and landscape has
been updated extensively, especially to highlight an increasing interest in human
conceptions of landscapes and ritual landscapes. We return to the archaeology of
the intangible in Chapter 13, which deals with people of the past.
• Discussion of bioarchaeology. Bioarchaeology has expanded rapidly as a subspe-
cialty in archaeology and is throwing important new light on both individuals and
groups. We summarize its major contributions in Chapter 13, which is expanded
throughout.
• Management of the past. Chapter 14 is a stand-alone discussion of cultural resource
management and public archaeology at a basic level, reflecting an increasing inter-
est in these subjects in beginning courses. It should be stressed, however, that the
fundamental principles of archaeology apply to all kinds of archaeological research,
whether purely academic or cultural resource management, now the dominant kind
of field archaeology in many parts of the world.
 Preface xxv
• Career advice. Chapter 15 gives frank advice on archaeology as a career in an era
when academic positions are shrinking and archaeology is becoming a profession.
This turned out to be a very popular chapter in earlier editions.
• Discovery boxes. Feature boxes describing both well-known and recent discoveries
have been added to each chapter. We have resisted the temptation to add more
boxes on the grounds that they break up the narrative in a distracting way in a sim-
ple book like this one.
• Revision and updating throughout. The entire text and the Further Readings at the end
of each chapter have been revised and updated on a page-by-page basis.

New and Revised Art Program

The twelfth edition’s art program has been completely revised, with new photo-
graphs and fresh or revised line art. The new illustrations provide additional back-
ground on recent discoveries, amplify the narrative, or replace older art with new
pictures. Some expanded captions serve to integrate the illustrations more closely
into the text.
Acknowledgments

The twelfth edition has benefited over many years from the expertise of colleagues, too
numerous to list here. We are deeply grateful for their encouragement and assistance,
also the students who have taken the trouble to write suggesting changes, or pointing
out errors.
Our thanks go to our editor, Matt Gibbons, also to Lola Harre, for much encour-
agement and many kindnesses; and also to the production team, who have turned a
complex manuscript into an attractive book and have done all to minimize unexpected
difficulties.
As always, we would be most grateful for criticisms, comments, or details of new
work, which can be sent to us at [email protected].
Brian M. Fagan
Nadia Durrani
newgenprepdf

Authors’ Note

Glossaries
Key terms defined in the Glossary of Technical Terms at the end of the book are high-
lighted in bold type throughout the book. Archaeological sites, cultures, and civiliza-
tions whose names are italicized at first main use in the book are described in the section
on sites and cultures at the end of the book.

Dates
The following conventions are used in the text:

• Dates before 10,000 years ago are expressed in years Before Present (B.P.). This is
common usage, although not commonly used in this particular book.
• Dates after 10,000 years ago are expressed in years Before Christ (B.C.) or Anno
Domini (A.D.).

Another common convention is B.C.E./C.E. (Before Common Era/Common Era), which

is not employed in this book. By scientific convention, “present” is A.D. 1950.
Please note that all radiocarbon dates and potassium-argon dates should be under-
stood to have a plus-or-minus factor that is omitted from this book in the interests of
clarity. They are statistical estimates. Where possible, radiocarbon dates have been cali-
brated with tree-ring chronologies, which adds a substantial element of accuracy (see
Chapter 5). For tree-ring calibration of radiocarbon dates, see vol. 40, no. 3, of the journal
Radiocarbon, 1998.
This page intentionally left blank
newgenprepdf

1 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations

The Birth of a Science

CHAPT ER OU TL I N E
What Is Archaeology? 6
The Beginnings of Archaeology 6
The Three Ages and the Antiquity of Humankind 8
The Discovery of the Ancient Civilizations 11
The Ancient Egyptians 11
The Assyrians and Sumerians 12
Troy and Mycenae 15
Asia: Scrolls and Shoulder Blades 17
African Phoenicians? 18
Early American Archaeology 19
The “Moundbuilders” 19
Maya Civilization 20
Southwestern Archaeology and the Direct Historical Approach 21
Diversity, Diffusion, and Human Progress 22
“From Them to Us”: Unilinear Evolution 23
Diffusionism: How Did Civilization Spread? 23
The Development of Modern Scientific Archaeology 24
Scientific Excavation 24
Archaeology and Ecology 25
Scientific Methods 25
“From Them to Us”: Contemporary Archaeological Theory 25
Ecological/Evolutionary Approaches 26
Historical Materialist Approaches 26
2 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations

Discovery! Archaeologist Jacques de Morgan holds up the golden crown of Egyptian queen
Khnemet, wife of pharaoh Senusret II (nineteenth century B.C.). This romanticized picture
appeared in the Illustrated London News in 1896.
(North Wind Picture Archives / Alamy)

PREVIEW
What is archaeology and how did it begin? Chapter 1 tells the story of the early
archaeological discoveries that led to the development of scientific archaeology. We
will enter the world of the early antiquarians and excavators and explore the con-
troversies surrounding the antiquity of humankind. Then we will journey to Egypt,
 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations 3
Mesopotamia, and the eastern Mediterranean to learn about the discovery of the
world’s earliest civilizations. Next, we will trace the beginnings of American archae-
ology with the controversies over the Moundbuilders and the spectacular discov-
ery of Maya civilization in Central America by John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick
Catherwood. Finally, we will examine some of the early theories that sought to
explain the development of ancient human societies, culminating in the basic theor-
etical approaches of today.

These great towns and temples and buildings rising from the water, all made of
stone, seemed like an enchanted vision … I stood looking at it, and thought no land
like it would ever be discovered in the whole world … But today all that I then saw
is overthrown and destroyed; nothing is left standing.
Bernal Díaz del Castillo on the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán,
Mexico, 1519 (Díaz, 1963)

The priests supervised the hasty digging of a vast pit in the royal cemetery at the city of
Ur in what is now southern Iraq over a few days in 2100 B.C. Dozens of workers carried
basketloads of earth up a lengthening ramp and dumped their loads to one side. Next,
in the bottom of the hole, a few masons built a stone burial chamber with a vaulted brick
roof. A small procession of high officials carried the royal corpse into the empty sepul-
cher and laid the dead man out in all his finery. They arranged food offerings along-
side the bier in gold and silver bowls. Then the dead man’s closest personal attendants
knelt silently by their master. They swallowed poison and accompanied the prince into
eternity. The walled-up chamber stood at the back of the empty pit, where the priests
presided over a lavish funeral feast.
A long line of soldiers, courtiers, and male and female servants filed into the mat-filled
burial pit. The participants wore their finest robes, most brilliant uniforms, and badges
of rank. Each courtier, soldier, or servant carried a small clay cup brimming with poi-
son. The musicians bore their lyres. The royal charioteers drove the ox-drawn wagons
down the ramp to their assigned place in the bottom of the great hole. Grooms calmed
the restless animals as the drivers held the reins (Figure 1.1). Everyone lined up in his or
her proper place in order of precedence.
Music played. A small detachment of soldiers guarded the top of the ramp with
watchful eyes. At a quiet signal, everyone in the pit raised the clay cups to their lips and
swallowed poison. Then they lay down to die, each in his or her correct place. As the
bodies twitched, then lay still, a few men slipped into the pit and killed the oxen with
quick blows. The royal court had embarked on its long journey to the afterlife.
The priests covered the grave pit with earth and a mud-brick structure before filling
the hole and access ramp with layers of clay. A sacrificial victim marked each stratum
until the royal sepulcher reached ground level.
Archaeology is the stuff dreams are made of – buried treasure, gold-laden phar-
aohs, and the romance of long-lost civilizations. Many people think of archaeologists
as romantic adventurers, like Hollywood’s Indiana Jones. Cartoonists often depict
us as eccentric scholars in pith helmets digging up inscribed tablets in the shadows
of great pyramids. Popular legend would have us as absent-minded professors so
deeply absorbed in ancient times that we care little for the realities of modern life.
Some discoveries, such as at Ur, or that of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun’s
tomb, do indeed foster visions of adventure and romance (see the Discovery
box on p. 5).
4 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations

Figure 1.1 A
 reconstruction of the burial ceremony at the Royal Cemetery at Ur. The ranked mem-
bers of the court stand in their assigned places, the grooms tending their wheeled carts.
(The Trustees of the British Museum / Art Resource, NY)

British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley reconstructed the Ur funeral from brilliant
archaeological excavations made in 1926; he uncovered a layer of skeletons that seemed
to be lying on a golden carpet. Woolley worked miracles of discovery under very harsh
conditions. He excavated with only a handful of fellow experts and employed hundreds
of workers. When the going got tough, he would hire a Euphrates River boatman to sing
rhythmic boating songs with a lilting beat. Woolley cleared 2,000 commoners’ graves
and sixteen royal burials in four years, using paintbrushes and knives to clean each
skeleton. He lifted a queen’s head with its elaborate wig-like headdress in one piece
after smothering the skull in liquid paraffin oil. Nearby, he noticed a hole in the soil,
poured plaster of paris down it, and recovered the cast of the wooden sound box of a
royal lyre. Woolley reconstructed a magnificent figure of a goat from tiny fragments. He
called the cemetery excavation “a jigsaw in three dimensions” and wrote of the sacrifi-
cial victims: “A blaze of colour with the crimson coats, the silver, and the gold; clearly
these people were not wretched slaves killed as oxen might be killed, but persons held
in honour, wearing their robes of office” (Woolley, 1982: 123). Unfortunately, Woolley’s
reconstruction from three-quarters of a century ago cannot be verified: his excavation
notes are inadequate for the purpose.
 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations 5

Discovery
Tutankhamun’s Tomb, Egypt, 1922
The small party of archaeologists and onlookers stood in front of the doorway that bore the
seals of the long-dead pharaoh. They had waited six long years, from 1917 to 1922, for this
moment. Silently, Howard Carter pried a hole through the ancient plaster. Hot air rushed
out of the small cavity and massaged his face. Carter shone a flashlight through the hole
and peered into the sepulcher. Gold objects swam in front of his eyes, and he was struck
dumb with amazement (Figure 1.2).
Lord Carnarvon fidgeted impatiently behind him as Carter remained silent.
“What do you see?” Carnarvon asked, hoarse with excitement.
“Wonderful things,” whispered Carter as he stepped back from the doorway (Carter and
Mace, 1923–1933: 63).
They soon broke down the door. In dazed amazement, Carter and Carnarvon wandered
through the antechamber of the pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb. They fingered golden
funerary beads, admired beautifully inlaid wooden chests, and examined the pharaoh’s
chariots stacked against the wall. Gold was everywhere – on wooden statues, inlaid on
thrones and boxes, in jewelry, even on children’s stools. Soon Tutankhamun was nick-
named the “Golden Pharaoh,” and archaeology became a domain of buried treasure and
royal sepulchers.

Figure 1.2 A
 rchaeologist Howard Carter cleans the sarcophagus of pharaoh Tutankhamun,
undisturbed for more than 3,000 years.
(Everett Collection Historical / Alamy)
6 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations
As for Carter and Carnarvon, they immediately installed an iron door to the tomb and
placed a twenty-four-hour guard at the entrance while they planned the clearance of the
sepulcher. Late that night they returned on their own, chiseled a small hole in the sealed
burial chamber, and slipped through to verify that the pharaoh lay undisturbed in his
sarcophagus.
It took Howard Carter eight years to clear Tutankhamun’s tomb, one of the greatest
archaeological discoveries ever made. Unfortunately, Lord Carnarvon died of an infected
mosquito bite shortly after the discovery of the sepulcher. Inevitably, there was journalis-
tic talk of a “curse of the pharaohs” imposed by ancient Egyptian priests on those who
violated the tomb. This is complete hogwash. The fact that most people who worked on
Tutankhamun lived into their eighties is conveniently forgotten.

What Is Archaeology?
Although Indiana Jones is said to be a fictional composite of several early-twentieth-
century excavators, we have never met a professional archaeologist who even vaguely
resembled him and only a handful who ever wore pith helmets. The heroic days when
one could discover an ancient civilization in a month and several royal palaces in a
week are long gone. Today’s archaeology is a sophisticated multidisciplinary science,
with roots in anthropology and history.
Archaeology is the scientific study of the human past via the material (or physical)
record, from the earliest times right up to the present. As such, most archaeology is
part of a much wider discipline, anthropology, which studies all aspects of humanity,
ancient and modern. But archaeologists are unique among scientists in that they study
changes in human cultures over long periods of time.
Archaeology is the only academic discipline and profession that has an ances-
try in treasure hunting. Nineteenth-century archaeology often consisted of a hasty
search for lost cities or gold-laden royal burials. It was a time of high adventure
and, it must be admitted, a great deal of unbridled looting. The damage to the past
was incalculable – royal tombs torn apart, temples ravaged, entire city mounds
reduced to dust. Fortunately, treasure hunting gave way gradually to scientific
excavation and, eventually, to the highly sophisticated science we know today. The
specialized science of today is a product not only of modern scientific innovation
but also of the work of flamboyant pioneers who did indeed find lost civilizations
in remote lands.
How, then, did archaeology begin? Here is an outline of some major developments
and discoveries, out of hundreds of important finds.

The Beginnings of Archaeology

People have speculated about human origins and the remote past for centuries. As early
as the eighth century B.C., the Greek writer Hesiod wrote that humanity had passed
through five great ages of history. The earliest was an Age of Gold, when “people dwelt
in ease,” the last an Age of War, when everyone worked terribly hard and experienced
great sorrow. In the sixth century B.C., the Babylonian monarch Nabonidus dug deep into
 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations 7
ancient city mounds near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. His workmen uncovered the
foundations of the temple of the goddess Ishtar at Agade near Babylon. The find, says
an ancient tablet, “made the king’s heart glad and caused his countenance to brighten.”
In later centuries, the Greeks and Romans were intensely curious about their primi-
tive ancestors, about Scythian “barbarians” living on the northern plains who drank
from cups made from human skulls, and about the Britons far to the northwest who
painted themselves blue. Classical writers wrote of the long-term continuity of human
life. “Thus the sum of things is ever being renewed,” wrote the Roman poet Lucretius
in the first century B.C. “Some races increase, others diminish, and in a short space the
generations of living creatures are changed and like runners hand on the torch of life”
(De Rerum Natura II: 75).
The history of archaeology really begins in the European Renaissance, which
saw quickened intellectual curiosity not only about the world beyond the narrow
confines of Europe but also about the Classical civilizations. People of leisure and
wealth began to follow the path of Renaissance scholars, traveling widely in Greece
and Italy, studying antiquities, and collecting examples of Roman art. The same
travelers were not above undertaking illicit excavation to recover statuary from
ancient temples and Roman villas. Soon the cabinets of wealthy collectors (antiquar-
ians) bulged with fine art objects, and the study of Classical lands became a major
scholarly preoccupation.
In 1738, Italy’s King Charles III commissioned Spanish engineer Rocque Joaquin
de Alcubierre to excavate the famed Roman city of Herculaneum, buried under deep
layers of volcanic ash by an eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Alcubierre blasted and
tunneled his way through rock-hard ash, tunneling sideways into underground gal-
leries where he found jewelry, statues of well-known Herculaneans, and fragments of
bronze horses. Visitors climbed down narrow shafts to walk through the buried the-
ater, marble-columned houses, and frescoed rooms. Hundreds of men, including pris-
oners, labored below ground, recovering bronze busts, texts written on papyrus scrolls,
and copies of now-lost Greek masterpieces. Toxic gases, slime, and collapsing tunnels
brought an end to this glorified treasure hunt.
Many antiquarians were not wealthy enough to travel to Classical lands, so they
stayed at home and searched for antiquities right in their own backyards. Stonehenge on
the uplands of southern England was the most famous curiosity, a place where “stones
of wonderful size have been erected after the manner of doorways” (Chippindale,
1994: 21). The antiquarians indulged their insatiable curiosity by digging into burial
mounds and river gravels, recovering all manner of prehistoric finds – clay vessels,
stone axes and adzes, bronze implements, even occasional gold ornaments. Their dig-
ging methods were brutally crude, usually little more than a hasty pit sunk into the
center of a mound to recover a skeleton and its grave goods as quickly as possible (see
Figure 1.3). Some fast-moving diggers would open two or three mounds a day. The
accounts of their excavations frequently include complaints that a delicate find “crum-
bled to dust before their eyes” – hardly surprising, considering the crude digging meth-
ods they employed.
Until well into the nineteenth century, archaeology was little more than a glorified
treasure hunt, even a sport. Not only that, but also the archaeological record of prehis-
toric times was a complete jumble of stone and metal tools and clay vessels. “All that
has come down to us … is wrapped in a thick fog,” complained one Danish scholar
in 1806.
8 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations

Figure 1.3 B
 ronze Age barrows (burial mounds) near Stonehenge, England. Victorian barrow
excavations were brutal, sometimes little more than a picnic. The Gentleman’s Magazine
wrote of one such excursion in 1840: “Eight barrows were examined … Most of them
contained skeletons, more or less entire, with the remains of weapons in iron, bosses of
shields, urns, beads, brooches … and occasionally more vessels.”
(Historic England)

The Three Ages and the Antiquity of Humankind

Although some eighteenth-century collectors were content to display their finds in
cabinets, others puzzled over the people who had made these artifacts. Were they
hunter-gatherers and farmers, like the American Indians, or little more than animals?
Had they developed more complex societies as time passed? What was needed was
some way of classifying and dating the past.
The first breakthrough came in 1816, when Danish archaeologist Christian Jurgensen
Thomsen opened the National Museum of Antiquities in Copenhagen to the public.
For years, scholars had talked of three ages – a Stone Age when people had no metals,
a Bronze Age, and an Iron Age. A man with a passion for order, Thomsen took the con-
fusing jumble of artifacts in his museum and laid them out in different rooms. In one
 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations 9
gallery he displayed implements of the Stone Age, “when little or nothing at all was
known of metals.” In another he showed those with stone and bronze but no iron, and
in a third, grave finds belonging to the Iron Age.
His new scheme soon became known as the three-age system, a system used to this
day for classifying the prehistoric past. Thomsen knew his scheme was mere theory, but
one of his assistants, Jens Jacob Worsaae, went out and excavated more burial mounds
and other sites. Worsaae proved that Stone Age occupations did, in fact, underlie Bronze
Age levels, and that Iron Age sites were the latest of all. The validity of the three-age
system was now soundly established, and it was in widespread use by the 1860s.
But how long had human beings lived on earth? Between medieval times and the
late eighteenth century, everyone in the Western world believed in the literal his-
torical truth of the Scriptures. Genesis 1 states that God created the world and its
inhabitants in six days. The story of Adam and Eve provided an entirely consistent
explanation for the creation of humankind and the world’s population. In the seven-
teenth century, Archbishop James Ussher used the genealogies in the Old Testament
to calculate that the world had been created on the night preceding October 23, 4004
B.C. These bizarre calculations soon became theological dogma and were defended
with great fanaticism by theologians in the early nineteenth century, when another
group of experts showed that humans had lived on earth much longer than a mere
6,000 years.
The Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth century with its massive
canal-building and railroad-building schemes created a demand for a new breed of
scientist – the field geologist. Men like Englishman William “Strata” Smith made their
living surveying the earth’s layers. Smith realized that the earth had been formed not
by divine creation but by natural processes such as erosion, weathering, and sedimen-
tation. These processes had been operating for a very long period of time – far longer
than 6,000 years. This theory of the earth’s formation became known as uniformitar-
ianism. Many of Smith’s geological strata contained the fossils of long-extinct animals,
fossils that French scientist Georges Cuvier pieced together. Cuvier reconstructed
ptero­dactyls and mammoths, and he used his fossils to place geological layers in order,
each with its distinctive fossil animals. But how old were these strata? Cuvier believed
that God had created each successive layer of the earth after great floods had wiped out
earlier life. Humans belonged to the time of the last flood. In other words, the world
was only 6,000 years old.
Cuvier was wrong, for the proof that human beings had lived in far earlier times was
right there in front of his nose. As early as 1600, elephant bones and a stone ax had been
found in the heart of London, but no established scientist took these, or many subse-
quent finds of the same type, seriously. Uniformitarian theories were well established
in geology by the 1830s, notably by the writings of British geologist Sir Charles Lyell,
whose book Principles of Geology strongly influenced Charles Darwin.
In 1836, an eccentric French customs officer named Boucher de Perthes began digging
for fossils in the gravels of the Somme River near Abbeville in northern France. He was
surprised to find dozens of stone axes alongside the bones of animals such as an extinct
form of hippopotamus. Boucher de Perthes claimed that these tools were the work of
people who had lived long before the biblical flood, but scientists just laughed at him. It
was not until stone artifacts and the bones of rhinoceroses, mammoths, and cave bears
were found in the sealed layers of a cave near Brixham in southwestern England in 1858
that the scientific establishment finally sat up and took notice. There could be no doubt
of the association. A steady stream of British geologists and archaeologists crossed the
English Channel in 1859 to examine de Perthes’s finds.
10 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations

Figure 1.4 A
 Thomas Nast cartoon from the British humor magazine Punch lampooning Charles
Darwin’s linking of apes to humans.
(Corbis)

The same year – 1859 – saw the publication of Charles Darwin’s book Origin of
Species, the pivotal scientific essay of the nineteenth century. It described the theory and
mechanisms of evolution and provided a theoretical framework for a human history
that was not a mere 6,000 years long but extended far back into the remote past. Darwin
himself said little about human ancestry, but the assumption that human beings were
descended from ape-like ancestors horrified many devout Victorians (see Figure 1.4).
“My dear, let us hope it is not so,” exclaimed one distraught mother. As the controversy
over evolution raged, scientists began the long search for human ancestors, which con-
tinues to this day.
In 1857, quarrymen working in the Neanderthal cave near Düsseldorf in Germany
unearthed an odd-looking skull with beetling brows quite unlike anything anatomists
had seen before. Many experts dismissed the find as that of a modern hermit or even
as one of Napoleon’s soldiers, but the great Victorian biologist Thomas Huxley thought
otherwise. He examined the skull and compared it to those of modern humans and
chimpanzees, pointing out that it had some ape-like characteristics. Here, then, was the
first scientific evidence that humans had some evolutionary links to the apes. He called
 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations 11
the evolutionary relationship between apes and humans “the question of questions,”
and it is a subject that still engages scientists.
In the decades that followed, the search for what was soon called the “missing link”
between apes and humans took hold of the popular imagination. Even today, discov-
eries of early human fossils cause considerable excitement and often turn their finders
into media celebrities. Raymond Dart caused an international furor when he announced
the discovery of a primitive ape-human, Australopithecus (“southern ape human”), in
South Africa in 1924. The celebrated Leakey family – Louis, Mary, son Richard, and
Richard’s wife Meave – have added more chapters to early human evolution than
all other scientists put together through a combination of expert fieldwork, intuition,
and sheer patience. For example, Louis and Mary Leakey searched at Olduvai Gorge in
Tanzania for human fossils for more than a quarter century before they unearthed a
magnificent 1.75-million-year-old Australopithecus skull in 1959. Since then, attention
has shifted northward to the Lake Turkana region of northern Kenya and the desolate
Awash area of Ethiopia, which was covered by lush woodland 5 million years ago. Not
that the numerous fossil finds of the past half century have dampened controversy: the
ferocious debates over human evolution and early human behavior rage just as stormily
today as they did in Darwin’s time.

The Discovery of the Ancient Civilizations

The Ancient Egyptians
The Greeks and Romans considered the ancient Egyptians the fountain of wisdom
and medical knowledge – the source of all the institutions of civilization. But ancient
Egyptian civilization remained a mystery until French general Napoleon Bonaparte
invaded Egypt in 1798 in an attempt to control the overland route to India. Napoleon
professed an interest in science, so he took 167 scientists and technicians along with him
to record all that was known of Egypt, ancient and modern. The scholars, “Napoleon’s
donkeys,” as the soldiers called them, were electrified by what they found. For six years
they sketched and explored, collected antiquities, and compiled a magnificent record
of an exotic civilization that had built temples and pyramids quite unlike anything in
Greece or Italy. Among their finds was the famous Rosetta Stone, bearing a trilingual
inscription that allowed the young French linguistic genius Jean François Champollion
to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs in 1822. This was the scientific breakthrough
that unlocked the secrets of civilization on the Nile, but by that time the scientists’
remarkable discoveries had brought another breed of visitor to Egypt – the tomb robber.
Egyptian antiquities were so exotic and valuable that they commanded enormous
prices in Europe, where the newly founded British Museum and the Louvre in Paris
were competing for sensational exhibits. For the best part of a century, the Nile Valley
attracted a remarkable procession of adventurers, treasure hunters, and scientists – a
classic case of villains pitted against heroes.
Some of the tomb robbers were flamboyant characters, such as circus strongman
turned archaeologist Giovanni Belzoni. From 1817 to 1819, Belzoni blasted and tun-
neled his way from one end of Egypt to the other. He searched for papyrus inscriptions
in mummy caves, where, he reported, “I contrived to sit, but when my weight bore on
the body of an Egyptian, it crushed like a bandbox.” He sank down “among the broken
mummies, with a crash of bones, rags, and wooden cases,” and had to wait for a quarter
12 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations
of an hour until the dust settled (Belzoni, 1820: 183). He found the (empty) royal tomb
of pharaoh Seti I (reigned from 1291 to 1278 B.C.) in the Valley of the Kings near Thebes,
and he was the first person in centuries to penetrate pharaoh Ramses II’s spectacular
temple of Abu Simbel. A tall man of immense strength and considerable charm, Belzoni
was an expert with levers, weights, and gunpowder – essential qualifications for an
early-nineteenth-century tomb robber. He left Egypt precipitately in 1819 (after a fracas
with his enemies in which shots were fired), exhibited some of his finds in London, and
perished while searching for the source of the Niger River in West Africa.
Tomb robbing and looting continued unchecked in Egypt until the late nineteenth
century; indeed, it persists to this day. But the mystery of hieroglyphs brought another
kind of visitor to the Nile – the dedicated scientist. For example, Englishman John
Gardiner Wilkinson spent ten years recording inscriptions in Egyptian tombs. He wrote
a detailed account of the daily life of the ancient Egyptians, which revealed a colorful,
cheerful civilization but one that was intensely conservative, deeply religious, and pre-
occupied with the afterlife.
All modern Egyptology has built on the work of Champollion and his contempor-
aries and on the more scientific excavation methods introduced to the Nile in the late
nineteenth century by the British archaeologist Flinders Petrie and others.

The Assyrians and Sumerians

“He will stretch out his hand and destroy Assyria,” thundered the Old Testament
prophet Zephaniah, “and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness.”
To the occasional adventurous European visitor, the lands by the Tigris and Euphrates
in what is now Iraq seemed like a confirmation of the prophet’s fulminations. All that
remained of Nineveh were some desolate earthen mounds covered with crumbling
bricks; all that survived of the Assyrians were some vague references in the Scriptures.
In 1840, the French government sent Paul-Emile Botta as consul to the small town
of Mosul on the Tigris River opposite the ruins of Nineveh. His real assignment was
to dig into Nineveh, to make spectacular archaeological finds as Napoleon’s scien-
tists had done in Egypt. Botta had no archaeological experience, and he did not exca-
vate Nineveh deeply enough to find anything worthwhile. He listened with interest,
though, when one of his men described the riches that lay under his home on another
mound at Khorsabad, 14 miles (22.4 kilometers) away. The consul sent him away with
a few helpers to see what he could find. A week later the man returned with tales of
walls covered with carvings of strange animals. Visiting the site, Botta gasped at the
bas-reliefs: winged, human-headed animals and processions of men with long beards.
He put more than 300 men to work on what turned out to be the Assyrian king Sargon’s
palace, a vast multiroomed structure adorned with grandiloquent reliefs that boasted of
the monarch’s triumphs.
Five years later, a restless young Englishman named Austen Henry Layard started
digging at the city of Nimrud downstream from Nineveh. He found two Assyrian build-
ings the first day and was soon tunneling deep into magnificent palaces (Figure 1.5).
This was the stuff of which archaeological legends were made. The visitor to Nimrud,
and later Nineveh, where Layard worked with much greater success than Botta, wan-
dered through deep earthen tunnels that followed the rooms of the palaces. Here one
gazed at “the portly forms of kings … so life-like that they might almost be imagined
to be stepping from the walls to question the rash intruder on their privacy” (Layard,
1849: 226).
 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations 13

Figure 1.5 M
 esopotamian archaeology, nineteenth-century style: Austen Henry Layard’s work-
men recover a human-headed lion from an Assyrian palace at Nimrud, Iraq.
(Mary Evans Picture Library / Alamy)

Layard excavated with a small army of workers and acted like a tribal chieftain. He
arranged marriages, settled quarrels, supervised the dig all day, and recorded inscrip-
tions until late at night. The young archaeologist was a brilliant writer; his books on
Nineveh are still in print. His discoveries caused a sensation in Europe. Among other
things, he uncovered a bas-relief of a royal lion hunt and a frieze that commemorated
the siege of Lachish, a city of Judah mentioned in the Old Testament. His diggers even
uncovered limestone slabs at the entrance to King Sennacherib’s palace that bore the
ruts made by his army’s chariot wheels.
Layard’s greatest discovery came at Nineveh, where he unearthed a complete
royal library – piles of clay tablets lying a foot (0.3 meter) deep on the floor of a spe-
cial chamber. He shoveled them into baskets and shipped them down the river, like
all of his finds, on a wooden raft supported by inflated goatskins. A quarter century
was to pass before even a small number of the tablets were deciphered, and when
they were they yielded further sensations. In 1872, a young cuneiform expert named
George Smith, who had never been to Mesopotamia, discovered a tablet that told of
the prophet Hasisadra, who survived a great flood sent by the gods to punish human-
kind by building a large boat. Hasisadra’s boat went aground on a mountain, and he
sent out birds to find a resting place. The entire story bore a remarkable resemblance
to the biblical story of Noah and the Great Flood. Seventeen lines of the story were
missing, so Smith was sent to Iraq to find the missing lines. Incredible though it may
seem, he discovered the tablet fragments in Layard’s excavation dumps in a mere
five days!
14 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations

Figure 1.6 Gertrude Bell.

(Mary Evans Picture Library / Alamy)

Those who believed in the historical truth of the Bible were, of course, electrified
by the Flood tablets. But scholars were more interested in the evidence they gave for
far earlier civilizations, for the Assyrians had merely copied the legend from earlier
accounts. In 1877, another French diplomat, Ernest de Sarzec, excavated the ancient city
of Telloh in southern Mesopotamia, where he discovered clay tablets and the remains
of a great temple far older than those of the Assyrians. What Sarzec had found was
the Sumerian civilization – the earliest literate society in the world and a civilization
as old as, if not older than, that of the ancient Egyptians. A whole series of long-term
excavations at other Sumerian cities like Nippur and Ur between the 1890s and 1930s
chronicled many more details of this flamboyant, warlike civilization, a patchwork
of small city-states that flourished 5,000 years ago between the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers. Much of the Near East was still off the beaten track except to bold travelers,
among them the Englishwoman Gertrude Bell (1868–1926) (Figure 1.6). She traveled
deep into Arabia and across the Syrian Desert with small parties of local people using
ancient caravan tracks, surveyed Islamic palaces, and eventually became administra-
tor of excavations in the new country of Iraq after World War I, where she founded the
Iraq Museum.
 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations 15

Figure 1.7 Sophia Schliemann. She wears the treasure allegedly found in a single hoard at Troy.
(Mary Evans Picture Library / Alamy)

Troy and Mycenae

Many of the best-known nineteenth-century archaeologists were either professional
travelers or adventurers. A few, like German businessman Heinrich Schliemann, were
obsessed with the past. Schliemann became fascinated with the Greek poet Homer at
an early age. He retired from business at the age of forty-six, determined to prove that
Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were true stories. In 1871, he started excavations at Hissarlik in
northwestern Turkey, which he soon proclaimed was the site of Homeric Troy. (Actually,
British consul Frank Calvert had made the discovery before him.)
Schliemann thought and acted on a large scale. Employing engineers who had
worked on the building of the Suez Canal in Egypt to supervise the work, he discov-
ered seven ancient cities superimposed one on top of the other. His excavations cul-
minated in the discovery of what Schliemann claimed to be a treasure of more than
8,000 gold ornaments and artifacts. He insisted that this was the treasure of Priam, the
Homeric king of Troy. Schliemann was no scientific saint – almost certainly his treasure
was assembled from isolated gold pieces found over many months. Interestingly, the
16 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations

Figure 1.8 A painting from the Caves of a Thousand Buddhas, Dunhuang, China.
(dbimages / Alamy)

treasure disappeared in the final days of World War II and was considered lost until it
surfaced in Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union (Figure 1.7).
Schliemann’s Troy discoveries caused a popular sensation, which reached a height
when he moved his operations to Mycenae in Greece in 1876. This was, he thought,
the legendary burial place of King Agamemnon, leader of the Greek armies at Troy.
More than 125 men tore into Mycenae and uncovered a circle of stone slabs. Schliemann
found more than fifteen burials at Mycenae, many of them with golden death masks and
adorned with jewels and fine inlaid weapons. “I have gazed on the face of Agamemnon,”
cried Schliemann. He believed he had found the Homeric king, but archaeologists now
date these finds to at least three or four centuries before the Trojan War, which raged in
about 1190 B.C.
Heinrich Schliemann was the last of the great adventurer-archaeologists to work
in Mediterranean lands, for his methods were too unscientific even for his day. By
the 1870s, Austrian and German archaeologists were working on Classical sites like
Olympia with a new precision that was a far cry from the methods of Belzoni, Layard,
or Schliemann. At Olympia, a team of architects worked with the archaeologists.
The Germans renounced all claims to the finds, and they built a special museum
for them at Olympia itself. A new era in archaeological research was beginning that
put scientific recording before spectacular discovery, precise excavation before rapid
shoveling.
 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations 17

Asia: Scrolls and Shoulder Blades

Most of the history in this chapter revolves around Europe, the Near East, and the
Americas, for these were the areas where the pace of archaeological discovery and
excavations quickened during the nineteenth century. Much early archaeology was
in the hands of travelers who were as much explorers as archaeologists. Swedish
explorer Sven Hedin was one of the first people with an interest in the past to explore
the Silk Route from Iran to China across Central Asia in 1895. Another traveler,
the Englishman Aurel Stein (1862–1943), studied Asian languages and traveled far
and wide, especially in the remoter parts of western China. He was one of the first
Europeans to visit the Caves of a Thousand Buddhas at Dunhuang in far western
China, where he quietly bought seven cases of priceless scrolls for a trifle and smug-
gled them out on camels and ponies for the British Museum (Figure 1.8). Stein’s loot-
ing activities and associations with treasure hunters are ethically indefensible by
today’s standards. His reputation is discredited, and with good reason, especially in
China, but he opened the eyes of the scholarly world to a huge blank on the archaeo-
logical and historical map.
In 1860, French zoologist Henri Mouhot (1826–1861) reached the overgrown ruins
of Angkor Wat, a magnificent Khmer temple complex in what is now Cambodia. A mis-
sionary had been there a decade earlier, but it was Mouhot who wrote the first vivid
account of this remarkable site before dying of fever a year later. Other French expedi-
tions followed, following the establishment of France’s rule over Cambodia. The first
sculptures and casts from Angkor and other overgrown Khmer temples reached Paris in
1873 and caused a sensation, the first examples of this greatest artistic tradition to come
to the attention of the wider world (see Figure 4.6 on p. 93).
Meanwhile, as Stein and others explored Central Asia, the London-based Royal
Asiatic Society fostered interest in Asian antiquities and culture. In 1877, American
Edward Morse excavated a shell mound near Tokyo, where he found cord-decorated
pottery that caused widespread interest. The formal teaching of archaeology began in
Japan as early as 1907 under the leadership of Hamada Kosaku, who had learned to
dig under Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, a pioneer excavator along the Nile.
Archaeology, or at least an interest in antiquities, started far earlier in China. As
early as the eleventh century, local scholars collected exotic bronze vessels from
graves in the flat northern Chinese farmland where the ancient, legendary Shang civ-
ilization had once flourished. Sporadic collecting attracted antiquarians and archae-
ologists to local curio shops. In the late 1920s, archaeologist Tung Tso-pin examined
an inscribed ox shoulder blade in a store near Anyang by the Huang He River of
northern China. He excavated into the river bank at a location where the Huang
He had recently changed course and found rich cultural debris, including more
inscribed ox shoulder bones. Several deep pits yielded tightly packed “archives” of
such oracle bones, also tortoiseshells inscribed with a list of Shang rulers, who flour-
ished until catastrophic floods destroyed their capital. When Chinese archaeologists
dug into a walled site named Chengziyai in Shandong Province in 1930–1931, they
found dozens more cracked shoulder blades that were divination records from the
early Shang civilization. Research into Chinese states in northern China has contin-
ued ever since.
18 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations

Figure 1.9 The Great Enclosure at Great Zimbabwe.

(2630ben / Thinkstock by Getty Images)

African Phoenicians?
None other than Charles Darwin proclaimed that Africa was the cradle of humankind.
Sub-Saharan Africa is indeed well known for the spectacular fossil discoveries of the
Leakey family, Don Johanson, Tim White, and others. But there was far more, often
discovered in places that did not feature in news headlines. Nineteenth-century African
explorers found traces of ancient life in the form of rock paintings in caves and rock
shelters, which were clearly linked to the ancestors of modern San hunter-gatherers of
eastern and southern Africa (see Figure 9.11 on p. 232). There were other discoveries, too,
notably those of a German geologist, Karl Mauch, who stumbled across the overgrown
Great Zimbabwe ruins in 1871, far north of the Limpopo River, the northern frontier of
South Africa (Figure 1.9). Despite the Africans living near the site, Mauch proclaimed
that he had found the long-lost palace of the biblical Queen of Sheba. Mauch’s claims
and those of later travelers caused great excitement in white settler circles. If Zimbabwe
was indeed built by long-forgotten Phoenicians, then their colonization of African lands
was justified. Controversy surrounded Zimbabwe from the beginning, with white set-
tlers pitted against archaeologists. After years of debate, another pioneer woman archae-
ologist, Gertrude Caton-Thompson, settled the issue in 1929. She proved conclusively
with dated imports of Chinese porcelain that Zimbabwe was about eight centuries old
and entirely the work of Africans. A no-nonsense excavator, Caton-Thompson filed let-
ters from Phoenician theorists under the category “Insane.”
 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations 19
Since Caton-Thompson’s day, African archaeology has been closely associated not
only with early human evolution but also with the writing of black African history in all
its fascinating diversity.
During the twentieth century, archaeology developed gradually into the scientific
discipline that it is today, a truly global field of study that studies ancient human diver-
sity over hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years. Archaeology is the only sci-
entific way we have of studying how human diversity developed and human societies
changed over very long periods of time. As such, it transcends national boundaries and
offers us a global perspective on human history.

Early American Archaeology

From the moment Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492, people specu-
lated about the origins of the American Indians. In 1589, a Jesuit missionary named
José de Acosta first proposed the general theory of their origins that provides the basis
for modern thinking on the subject. He believed it was entirely possible that “small
groups of savage hunters driven from their homelands by starvation or some other
hardship” had taken an overland route through Asia to their present homelands with
only “short stretches of navigation.” He wrote this a century and a half before Vitus
Bering sailed through the Bering Strait in 1728. Controversies over the routes taken by
the first Americans and the date of their arrival continue to this day.
While some scholars speculated about Indian origins, others marveled at the great
diversity of Native American populations. Some, like the Eskimo of the far north, were
hunter-gatherers; others lived in large villages or, like the Aztec of Mexico and the Inka
of Peru, in sophisticated civilizations. How could one account for this diversity, and
why were some societies more complex than others? These questions still preoccupy
archaeologists.

The “Moundbuilders”
When land-hungry colonists moved west of the Allegheny Mountains in the late eight-
eenth century, they were surprised to find large earthworks and burial mounds dotting
the landscape. Those who dug into them found no gold, only human skeletons, copper
and mica ornaments, and stone pipe bowls. Who had built these earthworks? Many col-
onists and intellectuals refused to believe that the “savage” Indians could have done so.
They argued that they were the work of long-vanished civilizations from foreign lands.
Only a few scholars disagreed, among them Thomas Jefferson. Fascinated by what
were already known as the Moundbuilders, he dug into a burial mound on his Virginia
estate in the 1780s and uncovered several layers of human skeletons.1 Unlike many of
his treasure-hunting contemporaries, Jefferson made careful note of the strata in the
mound, making this the first stratigraphic excavation in the Americas.
The Moundbuilder controversy continued to smolder through the nineteenth cen-
tury, pitting those who believed in an exotic explanation for the earthworks against more
sober scholars like Samuel Haven of the American Antiquarian Society, who argued that
the artifacts in the mounds often bore a resemblance to those used by living Native
American groups (see Figure 13.16 on p. 332). Writers churned out dozens of literary
fantasies about the Moundbuilders, writing about “white people of great intelligence
and skill” who had waged wars of conquest over the Midwest thousands of years ago.
20 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations
These racist theories had no foundation in scientific fact, but it was not until the 1890s
that Cyrus Thomas of the Bureau of American Ethnology proved beyond all reasonable
doubt that the mounds were in fact of Native American manufacture.

Maya Civilization
Farther south, “we were amazed on account of the great towers and buildings ris-
ing from the water. And some of our soldiers even asked whether the things we saw
were not a dream,” wrote conquistador Bernal Diaz of the Aztec capital in the Valley of
Mexico. However, the Aztec and earlier Native American civilizations sank into almost
complete historical oblivion. Dense forest covered the great Maya centers in the low-
lands of Mexico and Guatemala. Only a few Catholic priests recorded details of Maya
civilization before it vanished, among them Spanish bishop Diego de Landa. He visited
Maya temples and recorded some of their script in 1566 while torturing and imprison-
ing Indians for refusing to accept the Christian faith, burning their unique hieroglyphic
documents as well.
Only a few reports of temples and pyramids deep in the forest kept interest in the
ancient Maya alive. It was these that excited the imaginations of two men who are among
the immortals of early archaeology – lawyer-turned-traveler John Lloyd Stephens and
artist Frederick Catherwood. Both were experienced archaeological travelers who had
visited Egypt and the Holy Land. Stephens and Catherwood sailed for Central America
in 1839, a journey that took them on foot and by mule into the depths of the tropical low-
lands. They struggled through dense rain forest to the Maya city of Copán, where they
found pyramids “some in workmanship equal to those of the finest monuments of the
Egyptians.” The jungle-covered ruins covered kilometers. While Catherwood settled
down to draw the intricate carvings, Stephens tried to buy the site from the local people
for $50 so that he could exhibit his finds in New York. When the deal foundered, he con-
tented himself with writing a famous description of Copán. “The only sounds that dis-
turbed the quiet of this buried city were the noise of monkeys moving among the tops
of the trees, and the cracking of dry branches broken by their weight. They moved over
our heads in long and swift processions, forty or fifty at a time” (Stephens, 1841: 112).
Stephens and Catherwood recorded as much as they could of Copán, then visited
Palenque, where they searched for parallels to ancient Egypt among the human figures
at the site. Back in New York, Stephens provided one of the first assessments of Maya
civilization. “The works of these peoples, as revealed by the ruins, are different from
the works of any known people,” he wrote. “We have a conclusion far more interesting
and wonderful than that of connecting the builders with the Egyptians or any other
people. It is the spectacle of a people … originating and growing up here, having a
distinct, separate, indigenous existence; like the plants and fruits of the soil, indigen-
ous” (Stephens, 1841: 332). All subsequent scientific work on Maya civilization has been
based on these famous words. Stephens and Catherwood were to journey to the Maya
lowlands a second time, to study Uxmal, Chichén Itzá, and other famous locations. These
studies convinced Stephens that “these cities … are not the works of people who have
passed” (332).
Like Austen Henry Layard, John Lloyd Stephens was a superb popular writer, and
his books about the Maya became instant best-sellers. Frederick Catherwood’s accom-
panying pictures of the ruins are among the finest of all archaeological illustrations. In
writing his books, Stephens corresponded with the Boston historian William Prescott,
whose History of the Conquest of Mexico set the Spanish Conquest against a background
of the Aztecs’ rapid rise to power. The books by these two men, more than any others,
 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations 21

Figure 1.10 Frederick Catherwood’s painting of the Maya center at Tulum, Yucatán, Mexico.
(DeAgostini / Getty Images)

helped readers realize that there was more to America’s past than merely Moundbuilders
and mythical, exotic civilizations.

Southwestern Archaeology and the Direct Historical Approach

By the late 1800s, archaeologists and anthropologists were convinced that members
of living American Indian societies were the descendants of the first Americans. So
they began to work back from the present into the past. In 1879, Frank Hamilton
Cushing of the Smithsonian Institution, among others, traveled to Zuñi Pueblo in New
Mexico, intending to stay only three months. He ended up staying for nearly five years,
observing Zuñi life in remarkable detail, even being initiated into a secret society: the
Priesthood of the Bow. His widely read book My Adventures in Zuñi (1882) described
the life and customs of a Pueblo society whose roots stretched far back into the past.
His contemporary, anthropologist Adolph Bandelier, spent years wandering around
the Southwest on a mule, tracking down oral histories at Pecos Pueblo and other loca-
tions (Figure 1.11).
These oral traditions were to become a foundation of the archaeological research
conducted by Alfred Kidder of Harvard University at Pecos, New Mexico, from 1915
22 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations

Figure 1.11 P
 ecos Pueblo with the ruins of a Spanish colonial church built close to ancient Pueblo
kivas (subterranean chambers).
(powerofforever / iStock by Getty Images)

to 1929. Bandelier and Cushing were two of the pioneers who showed the close rela-
tionship between anthropology, the study of living peoples, and archaeology, the
study of past societies (see Chapter 2). Thus it was logical for Kidder to excavate the
intricate strata of Pecos using a direct historical approach, working backward from
well-documented historical levels far into prehistory. All American archaeology is
based on the general principles developed by these and other pioneers, who showed
the close links between ancient and modern Native American societies, between
archaeology and anthropology.

Diversity, Diffusion, and Human Progress

As archaeologists began to study the early prehistory of humankind and the great
civilizations, anthropologists were looking at the many diverse societies that explor-
ers and missionaries were revealing every year. These societies ranged from sim-
ple hunter-gatherers such as the Tierra del Fuego Indians and Australian Aborigines
to the complex and well-organized Japanese and the Pueblo Indians of the American
Southwest. Then there were the ancient Egyptians and the Sumerians of Mesopotamia,
civilizations that could be linked to the early development of Western civilization. How
could one explain all of this diversity and the change in human societies from hunting
and gathering to city dwelling?
 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations 23

“From Them to Us”: Unilinear Evolution

The nineteenth century was a period of remarkable industrial and technological change,
to the point that notions of human progress and achievement dominated popular think-
ing. Darwin’s theories of biological evolution seemed a natural extension of the doctrines
of social progress. Archaeologists and anthropologists alike soon wrote of millennia of
gradual human cultural evolution throughout early prehistory into modern times.
British anthropologist Edward Tylor (1832–1917) surveyed human development in
all of its forms, from the crude stone axes of very early humans, to Maya temples in
Mexico, to Victorian civilization. He developed a three-level sequence of human devel-
opment, from simple hunting savagery, as he called it, through a stage of simple farming
and pastoral nomadism, which he called barbarism, to civilization, the most complex of
all human conditions. American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881) went
even further and outlined no fewer than seven periods of human progress, starting with
savagery and culminating in a “state of civilization.”
Such notions of unilinear cultural evolution – of linear human progress from the
simple to the complex – were easy to defend in a world whose frontiers were still being
explored. Archaeology was still in its infancy, the remote past known mainly from
Europe and the spectacular discoveries of ancient civilizations in southwestern Asia.
It was easy for late-nineteenth-century scholars, living as they did in societies where
doctrines of racial superiority were unchallenged, to speculate that human societies had
evolved in a linear way from simple, unsophisticated hunter-gatherer bands to complex
literate civilizations. Such simplistic hypotheses are long discredited.

Diffusionism: How Did Civilization Spread?

As more and more data accumulated from archaeological excavations all over the world,
it became clear that a universal scheme of unilinear evolution was far too simplistic
an explanation for the past. Could cultures have changed as a result of external influ-
ences? Did, for example, the ancient Egyptians spread the institutions of civilization to
Southwest Asia and perhaps even further afield? Could one account for the differences
between human societies as the result of the diffusion of ideas and the migrations of
peoples? In its more extreme forms, diffusionism is an assumption that many major
human inventions originated in one place, then diffused to other parts of the world as a
result of trade, migration, cultural contact, even exploration.
Diffusionist theories of prehistory were popular in the early twentieth century, when
scholars like the Egyptologist Elliot Grafton Smith argued that the “Children of the
Sun,” the ancient Egyptians, had voyaged all over the world, taking sun worship and
their civilization with them. Like unilinear cultural evolution, extreme diffusionism
such as Grafton Smith’s did not stand up to detailed scientific scrutiny, especially when
twentieth-century archaeologists realized that they were dealing with very complex
problems of culture change over very long periods of prehistoric time. It is tempting
to write of bold Egyptians in great ships voyaging to America, or of sword-wielding
Bronze Age chieftains fighting their way from Hungary to Belgium 3,500 years ago; but,
unfortunately, the human past is much more complicated than that. Not that this deters
the lunatic fringe, who still write of epic voyages and lost civilizations buried under
Antarctic ice, to say nothing of ancient astronauts landing on earth and creating ancient
Maya civilization.
By the 1920s, both unilinear evolution and diffusionism were discredited explana-
tions for the past as archaeology became a fully fledged scientific discipline.
24 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations

The Development of Modern Scientific Archaeology

The development of scientific archaeology and the discovery of the prehistoric past
rank among the outstanding achievements of nineteenth- and twentieth-century sci-
ence. The process of development began with the establishment of the antiquity of
humankind and the development of the three-age system for subdividing prehistory.
The crude excavations of Layard and Schliemann are part of the story, as are the pion-
eer efforts of Cushing and Bandelier to work from the present back into the past. But
the technologically sophisticated archaeology of today can be said to stem from four
major developments: the invention of modern scientific excavation techniques, the use
of multidisciplinary approaches to study relationships between people and their envir-
onments, the increasing impact of science on archaeology, and the refinement of arch-
aeological theory since the 1960s.

Scientific Excavation
The science of excavation as a systematic way of recording ancient human behavior
began with the work of the Germans at Olympia in Greece during the 1870s. These
meticulous excavators placed recording before spectacular discoveries.
An eccentric retired British Army general, Augustus Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers, refined
the excavators’ methods even further during the 1880s. Pitt-Rivers was a firearms
expert who developed a passion for artifacts and the evolution of weapons. In later
life, he inherited a vast fortune and huge land holdings in southern England and
began devoting much of his time to excavating the ancient burial mounds and earth-
works on his estates. Pitt-Rivers was no ordinary excavator. He ran his digs like mili-
tary operations, employing expert supervisors who were trained surveyors. Unlike
his contemporaries, who dug to find spectacular artifacts, Pitt-Rivers believed that
every find, however small, was important. He insisted on accurate recording, built
model reconstructions of his sites, and observed even the most minute details of the
various layers. The military discipline of his work was apparent everywhere, even in
his photographs. “The figure standing at attention in the foreground gives the scale,”
reads one of his captions.
Pitt-Rivers’s remarkable excavations went largely unheralded until the 1920s, when a
new generation of field-workers refined his methods even further. The most famous was
another British archaeologist, Sir Mortimer Wheeler, who, between the 1920s and 1950s,
carried out a series of beautifully executed excavations on Roman and Iron Age sites in
Britain (see Figure 7.7 on p. 167) and on cities of the Indus civilization in Pakistan’s Indus
Valley. Wheeler also had a distinguished record as a military man. Like Pitt-Rivers, he
insisted on precise recording, employed photographers and other experts, and pio-
neered the use of trained amateur diggers on his sites. Wheeler was a strict teacher who
realized that all excavation was destruction. He also realized that scientific archaeology
could be dull, and he did everything he could to enliven his writings about the past.
“Dry archaeology is the driest dust that blows,” he once remarked. How true!
Twenty-first-century excavation still draws on the basic principles laid down by
Wheeler (see Chapter 7). These include specialized methods for excavating water-
logged sites, minute recording methods using electronic instruments, and sophisticated
ways of excavating minute discolorations, some of which even record the positions of
long-vanished burials in sandy soil. Most important of all, today’s archaeologists have
moved away from the study of single sites to investigating large numbers of sites within
 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations 25
regions (see Chapter 6). They also realize that all excavation is destruction, so that any
digging should be kept to a minimum to preserve the finite record of the past for future
generations.

Archaeology and Ecology

Few archaeologists thought of archaeological sites in their wider environmental con-
text until the 1950s, although many of the tools for environmental reconstruction were
developed early in the twentieth century. In 1916, Swedish scientist Lennart von Post
invented the science of palynology, the study of minute fossil pollen grains as a means
of studying ancient environments (see Chapter 10). Archaeologists eventually realized
that this new technique offered a chance to study ancient societies in the context of their
environments, but the study of cultural ecology, as it is called, did not reach a full level of
sophistication until the 1950s and 1960s.
Cultural ecology is the study of the ecological relationships between human cul-
tures and their environments, a study pioneered by anthropologist Julian Steward.
Archaeologically, a concern with environmental relationships began in the late 1940s
with British archaeologist Grahame Clark’s excavations at the Star Carr hunter-gatherer
site in northeast England. Using pollen analysis, plant remains, and animal bones, he
was able to show that this 11,000-year-old hunting site once lay in a bed of reeds backed
by birch forests. He even demonstrated that the site was occupied in late winter by
studying the red deer antler in the deposits. (Clark’s Star Carr interpretations have
now been revised by later work.) Clark relied heavily on botanists and zoologists in his
research. Today, teams of scientists from many disciplines routinely work together in
the field, reconstructing the environments of late Ice Age societies in France, examining
the landscape exploited by hunters 100,000 years ago in southern Africa, or monitoring
the modifications made by farmers to midwestern landscapes 1,200 years ago.

Scientific Methods
Archaeology is an integral part of history and of anthropology, the study of living
peoples, but the high-tech methods of the sciences have had an ever-increasing impact
on the field. Pollen analysis was one early contributor, as was aerial photography,
which gave archaeologists an overhead view of the past (see Chapter 6). Perhaps the
great revolution came in the 1950s, when radiocarbon dating revolutionized prehis-
toric chronologies, providing the first secure timescale for the last 40,000 years (see
Chapter 5).
Since then, the impact of science on archaeology has been universal, in everything
from computers, to sophisticated ways of searching for archaeological sites through
rain-forest canopies, to methods for studying prehistoric diets through the carbon iso-
tope content of human bones. The marriage between archaeology and other sciences
is now so close that both the methods and theoretical approaches of many disciplines
have affected the ways archaeologists go about their work. Many of these innovations
are described in the pages that follow.

“From Them to Us”: Contemporary Archaeological Theory

The impact of science and more scientific approaches has revolutionized explanations
of the past, too. The simplistic unilinear and diffusionist theories of yesteryear are long
26 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations
gone, for archaeological theory has become far more sophisticated in recent years (see
Chapter 4).
In archaeology, theory is the overall framework within which a researcher operates.
Theory is still little developed in archaeology, as in the other social sciences, partly
because working with highly varied human behavior is difficult, and also because of
still inadequate research methods. Scientific archaeology is a constant dialogue between
theory and observation, a more-or-less self-critical procedure that is very much based on
inferences about the past, in turn built on phenomena found in the contemporary world.
Modern-day archaeological theory was born in the 1960s, when the well-known
scholar Lewis Binford and others argued for more explicitly scientific approaches to the
study of culture change in the past. The theoretical ferment has continued ever since,
resulting in a considerable diversity of approaches. Some are concerned with the gen-
eral processes of cultural change, others with the effects of individual and group actions
on the ways cultures transform themselves through time.
Archaeological theory can be confusing, even for the expert, but the two major
approaches currently in vogue are the ecological/evolutionary approach and the his-
torical materialist approach.

Ecological/Evolutionary Approaches
Ecological/evolutionary theorists draw on a wide range of theoretical approaches,
including highly sophisticated ecological and evolutionary theory. Archaeologists using
this approach focus on interactions between ancient societies and their environments
and treat the former as part of holistic ecosystems.
Under this approach, culture change results from communal responses to stresses
in the relationship between human societies and their ecosystems. Such stresses could
include climate change – for example, a severe drought played a major role in indu-
cing hunter-gatherers at the Abu Hureyra site in Syria’s Euphrates Valley to switch to
agriculture in about 10,000 B . C . Other stresses could be changes in the availability of
such food sources as big game or acorns, rapid population increase, constraints on a
group’s ability to move about, or competition with other human, or even nonhuman,
populations.
The ecological/evolutionary approach assumes that cultural and social change results
from the complex interplay of many environmental and social factors. For instance,
botanist Gordon Hillman has documented how the hunter-gatherers of the Euphrates
Valley flourished in 11,000 B.C. by relying on fall nut harvests. A long drought linked to
a 1,000-year cold snap in northern latitudes caused local forests to shrink. The people
turned from nuts to wild grasses, a less-favored food but one that could be stored. Within
a short time, they supplemented wild grasses with deliberately planted plots. After only
a few generations, the foragers had become full-time farmers. When the drought ended
in about 1000 B.C., farming communities were flourishing over a wide area.
Ecological/evolutionary theory is widely used in archaeology, in part because a var-
iety of scientific methods provide information on ancient environments and lifeways.

Historical Materialist Approaches

A second set of competing theoretical frameworks can be loosely described as “historical
materialist” and covers a wide variety of approaches, including most research on gen-
der and women in the past. Whereas ecological/evolutionary theorists regard human
 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations 27
societies as an integrated, holistic system, the historical materialists view them as eclec-
tic amalgams of competing individuals, factions, and social groups. Human existence
is a constant negotiation with others – with one’s spouse, one’s family, co-workers, kin,
and entire communities. Each of these groups pursues its own strategies for survival
and success, but they do so within the realities of the individual or collective power they
possess and that of existing social inequality. Obviously, a king or a prime minister has
more power to pursue his or her goals than a humble farmer hoeing his fields.
This approach places a major emphasis on the role of individual social actors in
history. Historical materialists use all the same scientific methods as their ecological
colleagues and develop and test hypotheses with as much rigor. They also share with
ecologists a concern with human environmental interactions and have an interest in
technology, the production of artifacts and commodities, the dynamics of social groups,
and the control of labor and political power. But they see culture change as unfolding
and being conditioned by human acts and interactions – by materialism.
Take the example of food production in the Euphrates Valley. Under the historical
materialist rubric, one would theorize that with plenty of wild grain and abundant
labor, more competitive individuals might deliberately intensify their collection and
storage of wild grains, then foster their cultivation, as a deliberate strategy for acquiring
surpluses to be used as social capital for increasing their own wealth and social sta-
tus – by throwing feasts, engaging in ceremonial exchanges, and other devices. In other
words, individuals are all-important in the changeover from foraging to agriculture.
The historical materialist approach places people at the center of the study of the
past. We should never forget that archaeology, for all its scientific methods, is about the
people of the past and the ways in which they made decisions about their lives.
Today’s archaeological theory seems remote from the romantic days of archaeology,
when Layard, Schliemann, Stephens, and others discovered entire civilizations in a few
weeks. Modern archaeology is a serious, meticulous discipline with highly technical jar-
gon and research methods. But the thrill of archaeological discovery is still there, even
after a long day in the hot sun or the fog and cold wind.
Perhaps the most famous moment of archaeological discovery came in 1922, when
Egyptologist Howard Carter pried a small hole through the sealed doorway leading to
the tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun. He shone a candle through the aperture and
was struck dumb with amazement. “What do you see?” his companion Lord Carnarvon
asked impatiently. “Wonderful things,” whispered Carter as he stepped back from
the hole.
Few of us will ever be fortunate enough to experience a thrill as unique as Carter’s,
but the excitement of archaeology is just as great with smaller, less important finds –
many of them pried from seemingly insignificant objects or from discoveries as small as
an individual seed.
In the pages that follow, we describe the principles and basic methods of archaeo-
logical research that make such moments possible.

SUMMARY
1. Archaeology began in the European Renaissance as travelers collected Classical
antiquities.
2. Collecting led to excavation at the Roman city of Herculaneum in 1738, followed by
widespread digging throughout Europe, especially into burial mounds.
28 Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations
3. The chaotic finds from these investigations were first classified by Danish museum
curator Christian Jurgensen Thomsen, who developed the three-age system for sub-
dividing prehistory in 1816.
4. The antiquity of humankind was established in 1859 after stratigraphic excavation
of stone tools associated with the bones of extinct animals.
5. Other excavators in Egypt and Mesopotamia, like Englishman Austen Henry
Layard, unearthed the early civilizations of southwestern Asia.
6. In the Americas, John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood investigated
ancient Maya civilization in the 1840s.
7. In North America, early archaeologists worked back from the present into the past,
investigating ancient Pueblo and Moundbuilder cultures in North America.
8. Early archaeological theories invoked unilinear cultural evolution and diffusion as
explanations for such developments as the origins of civilization.
9. Modern scientific archaeology developed out of meticulous excavation techniques,
a concern with environmental change, and explicitly scientific methods that allowed
the development of two broad theoretical approaches, the one ecological and evolu-
tionary, the other historical materialism.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What were the key developments that led to the establishment of human
antiquity?
2. How did the study of chronology in American archaeology begin? What was the
key discovery?
3. What were three key developments that led to the emergence of modern scientific
archaeology?

NOTE
1 The term ‘Moundbuilder’ is used in this chapter, as it was the commonly employed
term during the nineteenth century. The label covers the Adena, Hopewell, and
Mississippian earthworks in today’s terminology.

FURTHER READING
Paul Bahn, ed., The Cambridge Illustrated History of Archaeology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), is a lavishly illustrated global summary of the subject. Brian Fagan
and Nadia Durrani, A Brief History of Archaeology, 2nd edn. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 2016), is just that, for beginning students. Gordon Willey and Jeremy Sabloff, A History
of American Archaeology, 2nd edn. (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1990), is widely quoted.
Bruce Trigger’s A History of Archaeological Thought, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), is the definitive work on the subject. For firsthand accounts of major
discoveries, see Brian Fagan, ed., Eyewitness to Discovery (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1996).
newgenprepdf

2 Introducing Archaeology and

Prehistory

CHAPT ER OU TL I N E
The Tourist, the Collector, and the Archaeologist 31
Who Needs and Owns the Past? 34
What Do Archaeologists Do? 39
Anthropology, Archaeology, and History 39
Archaeologists on the Job 40
Many Sites, Many Archaeologists 41
Why Does Archaeology Matter? 42
Mysteries of the Past 44
A Sideline: Pseudoarchaeology 45
Archaeology and Human Diversity 45
Archaeology as a Political Tool 47
Archaeology and Economic Development 48
The Irresistible Lure of the Past 49
The Prehistory of Humankind According to Archaeologists 50
Early Prehistory 51
The Origins and Spread of Modern Humans 53
The Origins of Food Production 53
The Origins of States (Civilizations) 54
European Expansion 54
30 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory

The might of Rome: Hadrian’s Wall, near the border of England and Scotland, built by Roman
Emperor Hadrian to keep the Scots out of the northernmost Roman province in the first century A.D.
(Martyn Unsworth / Thinkstock by Getty Images)

PREVIEW
Chapter 2 distinguishes between scientific archaeology and pseudoarchaeology. We
will examine the differences between archaeology, anthropology, and history. There are
many specialties within archaeology, some of which will be described in this chapter.
This chapter also answers a fundamental question: Why does archaeology matter in
today’s world? It is important as a source of information on human diversity; it pro-
vides important tools for economic development, especially subsistence agriculture;
and it supports national economies through archaeological tourism. We will end with a
summary of the major developments of human prehistory as background for the chap-
ters that follow.
In 7000 B.C., a small group of foragers camped in a sandy clearing near Meer in
northern Belgium. One day, someone walked away from camp, sat down on a con-
venient boulder, and made some stone tools using some carefully prepared flakes and
lumps of flint he or she had brought along. A short time later, a second artisan sat
down on the same boulder with a prepared flint cobble, struck off some blanks, and
made some borers. Later, the same two stoneworkers used their finished tools to bore
and groove some bone. When they finished, they left the debris from their work lying
around the boulder.
 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory 31
When Belgian archaeologist Daniel Cahen excavated the site 9,000 years later, all he
found were some scatters of stone debris. He plotted the clusters and painstakingly refit-
ted the stone flakes onto their original stone cobbles. After months of work, he recon-
structed the stoneworkers’ activities and showed that the second one was left-handed.
This story, conjured up from a tiny scatter of inconspicuous stone tools, appears to
be a miracle of archaeological detective work. In fact, it emerged from months of careful
excavation, and especially laboratory work, which pieced together hundreds of stone
fragments into a coherent reconstruction of ancient life. Modern scientific archaeology
has an awesome ability to reconstruct the behavior of our forebears. The following
pages take you on a journey through the world of scientific archaeology – an adventure
as engaging as it is many-sided.

The Tourist, the Collector, and the Archaeologist

Any thinking person who visits an archaeological site faces the reality of the past, a
vista of human experience that stretches far back in time. How, visitors may wonder, do
archaeologists know how old a site is, and what do their finds mean? What do archae-
ologists really do? How do they unravel the complexities of early human societies? It
seems very complicated to dig for the past. And the unchanging, sometimes incred-
ibly ancient structures that surround one add to the sense of romance and awe (see the
Discovery box).

Discovery
The Jamestown Settlement
In 1607, a small band of adventurers under the sponsorship of the Virginia Company
founded the first lasting English settlement in the Americas at Jamestown in Chesapeake
Bay. By 1619, the settlers over a wide area of Virginia had elected their first assembly, a
year before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth in what was to become Massachusetts. The
historical records of the early years of the colony are, at best, ambiguous, but they chron-
icle social unrest, warfare with the local Indians, and problems with hunger and good water
supplies. The introduction of Caribbean tobacco by John Rolfe in 1613 provided the cash
crop that ensured the survival of the colony. Jamestown’s importance eroded as tobacco
plantations thrived in the interior. The settlement was abandoned when the state capital
moved to nearby Williamsburg in 1699.The site of the original settlement was forgotten and
assumed to have vanished under the flooded James River.
With inadequate historical records, the National Park Service turned to archaeology in
1955, on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the settlement. The excavations located
a number of seventeenth-century brick structures, ditches, trash heaps, and wells, but not
the old fort site, which was still thought to be under water. Forty years later, in 1994, the
Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities decided to search once more for
the lost settlement. Archaeologist William Kelso undertook the project, basing his work on
existing excavations, maps and other records, and a hunch that the site had survived on
dry land. He was fortunate that the land had reverted to agriculture after abandonment, so
there was no modern town atop the location. Kelso decided to dig near the church, on the
grounds that sacred places do not shift – that worship there was continuous, even if dif-
ferent churches had risen on the same site. There were also finds of seventeenth-century
artifacts in the same general location, which lay near a Confederate earthwork from the
Civil War.
32 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory

The 1994 season yielded telltale signs of a large, heavy wooden palisade, as well as
more seventeenth-century artifacts. Pipe fragments and other artifacts from the palisade
post backfill appeared to date the structure to the time of the 1607 fort. The excavation,
conducted in 10-foot (3-meter) squares, later revealed a curved trench with accompanying
ditch, ending abruptly in what must have been a gate location. By 1996, Kelso was certain
that he had located the long-lost Jamestown fort of 1607 (see Figure 2.1).
Like all historical archaeology, the excavation was a complex jigsaw puzzle of artifacts,
structures, and historical records. Kelso unearthed the remains of four buildings inside the
fort – a barracks, a quarter, and some row houses. A factory for trading with the Indians lay
outside the palisade. Each structure was of strikingly similar design: at first a cellar covered
with a crude roof, with larger post-supported buildings added later, protected by thatched
roofs covering rectangular buildings. The fill of one cellar contained a coin of King James
I and VI of England and Scotland, minted in 1606–1607, conclusive proof that the buildings
dated to the time of the original fort. The architecture was a form of construction known as
“mud and stud,” used in Lincolnshire in eastern England at the time. Some of the colonists
were from Lincolnshire, including William Laxton, a carpenter.
The recovery of the Jamestown settlement is one of the most remarkable discoveries
of recent years. Kelso also excavated a series of settler burials, which provided a portrait
of some of the people, including facial reconstructions and insights into the mystery sur-
rounding one colonist who died of a gunshot wound.

Figure 2.1 Excavating one of the colonist’s houses at Jamestown.

(Sunpix People / Alamy)
 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory 33
Our complex world is full of unexplained mysteries and hidden surprises – phenom-
ena that sometimes defy obvious explanation. Many people believe that the archae-
ologist lives in mysterious regions of our world, with “missing links” and long-lost
civilizations. Enterprising authors and movie producers take us on fantasy rides into
the strange territories of their specially selected archaeologists. From the comfort of our
armchairs, via television or the World Wide Web, we can search for lost continents,
reconstruct Noah’s Ark, and trace the landing patterns of extraterrestrials’ spaceships.
Such searches are not only fantasy fun but are big business as well. Millions of dollars
have been made from this type of archaeology – which, unfortunately, bears little resem-
blance to reality.
The romance of archaeology has taken people all over the world in search of the past.
Every year thousands of tourists visit the pyramids of Giza in Egypt (see Figure 2.2).
To promote tourism, the Mexican government spent millions of pesos restoring the
ancient city of Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico. Most popular package tours abroad
now include visits to an archaeological site or two (for a map, see Figure 2.3). Many
sites – for example, Stonehenge in England and the Stone Age painted cave at Lascaux in
France – are in danger of permanent damage from the sheer volume of visiting tourists.
As a result, you can no longer wander among the uprights at Stonehenge. The French
government has built a magnificent replica of the Lascaux cave paintings for tourists to
enjoy, but the original cave is closed to all but scientists (see Figure 2.4).
Most such archaeological sites now boast a museum. Eagerly, the tourist peers into
the display cases and admires the glittering gold of a fine necklace or the crude stone
tools made by a human hand more than a million years ago. Perhaps the visitor pauses
at the door to buy a replica of the archaeological find in the case. It is a pleasing reminder
of a fleeting visit to the past, a memento to be displayed at home. But, unfortunately,
many people are greedier – they covet the past and want to own a piece of the real thing.
Collectors and treasure hunters, many of whom regard themselves as legitimate
archaeologists, are the curse of archaeology. The spiritual beliefs and vanity of the
ancients commanded that they be buried with riches to accompany them in the after-
life. The greed of their descendants decrees that people today covet these riches. The
antiquities dealer and the private collector pay enormous prices for painted pots and
other fine antiquities looted from otherwise undisturbed sites. Major museums com-
pete to acquire the finest specimens of prehistoric art. In perhaps the most blatant case
of all, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York paid a cool million dollars for one
painted Greek vase, which had been looted from an Italian tomb. The museum has now
returned the vase to Italy.
There seems to be some fundamental human desire to collect things and display them
in the privacy of one’s home. Collecting is a passion once described as “so violent that it
is inferior to love or ambition only in the pettiness of its aims.” People collect everything
from barbed wire to beer cans, and many think of archaeology simply as the acquisition
of objects. But when people collect archaeological finds, they are collecting a part of an
endangered, finite resource that is rapidly vanishing, a unique archive that can never
be replaced. Every object they buy or dig from a site is the product of ancient human
behavior. This behavior can be partly reconstructed from objects found in the earth, but
much of our insight depends on the contexts (positions) in time and space in which
the objects occur in the ground. Removing an artifact from its context is an irreversible
act that cheats us all of knowledge. (Perhaps it should be mentioned that professional
archaeologists also destroy sites as they excavate them, but they record the context of
their finds meticulously as they go along, a critical ingredient in scientific archaeology.)
34 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory

Figure 2.2 T
 he pyramids of Giza in Egypt. These pyramids were the culmination of more than
a century of aggressive royal pyramid building by ancient Egyptian kings of the Old
Kingdom, c. 2600 to 2100 B.C. Each served as the burial place for a king and was con-
nected by a causeway to a mortuary temple where offerings were made to the deceased.
The pyramid shape is thought to represent a symbolic sun-ray descending to earth
through the clouds, a symbolic ladder for the divine king to ascend and join the sun
god in the heavens.
(WitR / Thinkstock by Getty Images)

Modern archaeology is not treasure hunting or collecting, nor is it a fantasy search

for lost worlds; it is the systematic study of humanity in the past via the material record,
and also stewardship of this valuable record of the past. In studying these valuable
remains we investigate every aspect of human culture, from ancient technologies to
social organization or religious beliefs.
We must never forget that the archaeological sites that document the past are a
finite, not a renewable, resource. All of this raises a fundamental question: Who owns
the past?

Who Needs and Owns the Past?

All societies have an interest in the past. It is always around them, haunting, mys-
tifying, tantalizing, sometimes offering potential lessons for the present and future.
The past is important because social life unfolds through time, embedded within a
framework of cultural expectations and values. In the high Arctic, Inuit preserve their
traditional attitudes, skills, and coping mechanisms in some of the harshest environ-
ments on earth. They do this by incorporating the lessons of the past into the present.
 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory 35

Figure 2.3a T
 he archaeological sites mentioned in this book. Obvious geographic place names are
omitted.

In many societies, the ancestors are the guardians of the land, which symbolizes pre-
sent, past, and future. Westerners have an intense scientific interest in the past, partly
born of curiosity but also out of a need for historical identity. There are many reasons
to attempt to preserve an accurate record of the past. Nobody, least of all an archaeolo-
gist, should assume that he or she is uniquely privileged in his or her interest in the
remains of that past.
We have no monopoly on history. Many non-Western societies do not perceive them-
selves as living in a changeless world. They make a fundamental distinction between the
recent past, which lies within living memory, and the more remote past. For instance, the
36 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory

Figure 2.3b (cont.)

Australian Aborigine groups living in northeast Queensland distinguish among kuma,

the span of events witnessed by living people, anthantnama, a long time ago, and yilamu,
the period of the creation. Furthermore, many societies also accept that there was cultural
change in the past. The Hadza hunter-gatherers of East Africa tell of their homeland’s
first inhabitants as being giants without fire or tools. These paradigms of the past take
many forms, some involving mythic creators of culture – usually primordial ancestors,
deities, or animals establishing contemporary social customs and the familiar landscape;
others describe a more remote, discontinuous heroic era, such as that of the Greeks, which
allowed such writers as the playwright Aeschylus to evaluate contemporary behavior.
 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory 37

Figure 2.3c (cont.)

Most human societies of the past were nonliterate, which meant that they transmitted
knowledge and history orally, by word of mouth. The Aztec oral histories, partially set
down after the Spanish Conquest in the sixteenth century, are an excellent example of
history transmitted by word of mouth. They were recited according to a well-defined
narrative plot, which focused on great men, key events such as the dedication of the sun
god Huitzilopochtli’s temple in the Aztec capital in 1487, and the histories of favored
groups. In these, as in other oral histories, there were formulas and themes, which
formed the central ingredients of a story that varied considerably from one speaker to
the next, even if the essential content was the same. Many oral histories are mixtures
of factual data and parables that communicate moral and political values. But to those
38 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory

Figure 2.4 A great bull on the walls of Lascaux Cave, painted about 17,000 years ago.
(Hemis / Alamy)

who hear them, they are publicly sanctioned history, performed before a critical group
and subject to the critical evaluation of an audience that may have heard the same stor-
ies before.
Oral traditions are hard to use scientifically since their antiquity is very difficult
to establish. In some cases – in Australia, for ­example – there are instances where
oral histories and archaeology coincide in general terms. For example, the tradi-
tions speak of the arrival of the first people from overseas, of the flooding of coastal
areas after the Ice Age, and of the hunting of giant marsupials (pouched animals
like the kangaroo). So Australia’s past can be said to come from two sources: arch-
aeological data and oral traditions. In some instances, the archaeologists and the
indigenous people have shared interests and come together to identify sacred and
historic places, often to ensure they are preserved – even if the two groups disagree
fundamentally on the significance of a particular location (for instance, a location
where the archaeologist finds no buildings or artifacts, yet the local people consider
it a “sacred place”).
But, all too often, archaeologists and local communities have different interests in
the past. To archaeologists, the past is scientific data to be studied with all the rigor of
modern science. To local people, the past is often highly personalized and the property
of the ancestors. Such accounts are valid alternative versions of history, which deserve
respect and understanding, for they play a vital role in the creation and reaffirmation
of cultural identity. And they raise a fundamental question, which lies behind many
Native American objections to archaeological research. What do archaeologists have to
offer to a cultural group that already has a valid version of its own history? Why should
 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory 39
they be permitted to dig up the burial sites of the ancestors or other settlements and
sacred places under the guise of studying what is, to the people, a known history? It
is a question that archaeologists have barely begun to address. We should never forget
that alternative, and often compelling, accounts of ancient times exist, and they play an
important role in helping minority groups and others to maintain their traditional heri-
tage as it existed before the arrival of the Westerner. There are many stakeholders in the
past, not just archaeologists.

What Do Archaeologists Do?

What, then, do archaeologists do? Quite simply, we are a special kind of anthropologist
and a special type of historian.

Anthropology, Archaeology, and History

Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity in the widest possible sense.
Anthropologists study human beings as biological organisms and as people with a dis-
tinctive and unique characteristic – culture. They carry out research on contemporary
human societies and on human development from the very earliest times. Thus, there is
a close relationship between archaeology and anthropology, as there is between archae-
ology, history, and other disciplines.
This enormous field is divided into four major subdisciplines. Physical (or biological)
anthropology involves the study of human biological evolution and the variations
among different living populations. Physical anthropologists also study the behavior
of living nonhuman primates such as the chimpanzee and the gorilla, research that
can suggest explanations for behavior among very early humans. Cultural (or social)
anthropology deals with the analysis of human social life both past and present. It is pri-
marily the study of human culture and how culture adapts to the environment. Among
cultural anthropologists, ethnographers describe the culture, technology, and econom-
ics of living and extinct societies, and ethnologists engage in comparative studies of
societies, a process that involves attempts to reconstruct general principles of human
behavior. Social anthropologists analyze social organization, ways in which people
organize themselves. Finally, linguistic anthropologists study human languages, a
field of research that is sometimes important to the study of the past.
Archaeology and cultural anthropology are part of the same discipline. However,
archaeologists typically study past societies, which usually means that they cannot
speak to their informants. Excavations and site surveys yield the material remains of
human behavior in the past – stone tools, pot fragments, broken animal bones, and so
on – all manufactured or modified by deliberate actions possibly centuries, even millen-
nia, ago. The archaeologist then links these material remains to actual human behavior
by developing theoretical models to explain such behavior and cultural change over
long periods of time. As we have said, archaeology is a unique way of studying human
cultural change from the time of the earliest human beings 2.5 million years ago up to
the present.
By studying ancient societies, archaeologists are also studying human history on a
broad and long canvas, but with a difference. They use the material remains of the past
to reconstruct the past, whereas historians use documents of all kinds. History recon-
structed by archaeologists tends to be more anonymous, for archaeological chronologies
rarely rival those of historians and can only occasionally pinpoint someone’s lifetime.
40 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory
But we are a special kind of historian – an emphasis that is stronger in Europe, where
there is continuity in history over thousands of years, than in the Americas, where
continuous written records date back just a few centuries to Christopher Columbus in
A.D. 1492.

Archaeologists on the Job

Modern-day archaeologists are far removed from the pith-helmeted professors beloved
by cartoonists. As recently as the 1940s, you would have been correct to assume that
most archaeologists spent their time in the field engaged in excavation and surveys.
A half century ago, there were only a few hundred archaeologists throughout the world,
most of them in Europe and North America. Today, there are archaeologists working in
every corner of the globe – in Australia and on the Pacific Islands, in China and Siberia,
in tropical Africa, in Latin America, and in the high Arctic. No one knows how many
archaeologists there are worldwide, but the number must be near 15,000. Today, archae-
ology is a global science, a profession as much as an academic pursuit. There are even
archaeologists engaged in the study of modern urban garbage.
The change began after World War II, as archaeologists became concerned about the
wholesale destruction of archaeological sites with no effort being made to investigate
them first. “Salvage archaeology” was born, notably with the international effort spon-
sored by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) to
find archaeological sites in the vast area of the Nile Valley scheduled to be flooded by the
Aswan Dam in the 1960s, and with the Glen Canyon Dam project in Utah. The realization
that archaeological sites were vanishing rapidly in the face of looters and industrial devel-
opment, and also due to deep plowing and mining, led to a stream of federal and state
legislation from the 1960s through the 1980s designed to protect the past. Archaeology
itself changed character in Europe and North America, as pure academic research gave
way to field and laboratory research aimed at assessing and preserving the past and also
mitigating the effects of construction and other activities. Such cultural resource manage-
ment (CRM) is a type of archaeology concerned with the management and assessment of
the significance of cultural resources such as archaeological sites. It is now the dominant
activity in North American archaeology; many examples appear in these pages.
The shift toward CRM is mirrored in employment figures. In the 1960s, nearly all
archaeologists were university or college professors or worked in museums. In a 1998
study of American archaeologists, Melinda Zeder of the Smithsonian Institution chroni-
cled a dramatic shift in archaeological employment. Now only 35 percent of American
archaeologists are academics, 8 percent labor in museums, and 23 percent work for
federal, state, or local governments, many in purely administrative functions. The
fastest-growing segment of archaeological employment is in the private sector. In 1997,
18 percent of all American archaeologists worked for private consulting firms engaged
in environmental monitoring and cultural resource management. Today, the figure is
still climbing.
The Zeder study shows that archaeology is changing rapidly from a purely academic
discipline into a profession with strong roots in both government and private business.
This is because the past is under siege from industrial civilization in the forms of deep
plowing and mining, industrial development, road construction, and the inexorable
expansion of huge cities – not to mention looters and pothunters, who think nothing of
ravaging sites for valuable finds they can sell. Increasingly, archaeologists are managers
 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory 41
rather than professors, supervising a precious and rapidly vanishing resource: the
human past. The pith-helmeted professor of yesteryear is the cultural resource manager
of today. An image further removed from the adventurer of a century and a half ago is
hard to envision.

Many Sites, Many Archaeologists

Archaeology is now a discipline and profession of specialists, often in dauntingly
obscure topics. During the course of our careers, we have worked with Assyriologists,
Egyptologists, and underwater archaeologists, to mention only a few relatively broad
specialties. We have collaborated with experts on ancient Egyptian wigs and wine,
Ice Age earthworms, southern African mice, reindeer teeth growth rings, and World
War I Zeppelin crash sites in England – all this without mentioning the many federal
and state government archaeologists and private sector specialists who have crossed
our paths.
Here are some of the major specialties among academic archaeologists: Prehistoric
archaeologists (prehistorians) study prehistoric times, from the time of the earliest
human beings to the frontiers of written history. The numerous specialties within pre-
historic archaeology include paleoanthropology, the study of the culture and artifacts
of the earliest humans, of stone technology, art, and hunter-gatherers. There are special-
ists in the prehistory of the Old and New Worlds, Europe, the American Southwest, and
many other regions.
Classical archaeologists study the remains of the great Classical civilizations of
Greece and Rome (see Figure 2.5). While many classical archaeologists study art and
architecture, others study the same kinds of economic, settlement, and social issues that
interest prehistorians.
Biblical archaeologists are experts on a variety of cultural groups living in what is
now Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. They attempt to link accounts in biblical and Canaanite
literature with archaeological data.
Egyptologists, Mayanists, and Assyriologists are among the many specialist archae-
ologists who work on specific civilizations or time periods. Such specialties require
unusual skills – for example, a knowledge of Egyptian hieroglyphs or ancient Maya
script.
Historical archaeologists work on archaeological sites and study problems from peri-
ods from which written records exist. They excavate medieval cities, such as Winchester
and York in England, and study Colonial American settlements, Spanish missions, and
nineteenth-century frontier forts in the American West.
Historical archaeology (sometimes called text-aided archaeology) is concerned
mainly with the study of ancient human societies with the aid of written texts (see
Chapter 5).
Underwater archaeologists study ancient sites and shipwrecks on the seabed and on
lake beds, even under the rapids in Minnesota streams where fur traders once capsized
and lost canoe loads of trade goods. Underwater archaeology uses diving technology,
but its objectives are identical to those of archaeology on land – to reconstruct and inter-
pret past cultures as well as ancient seafaring (see the section on the Uluburun ship-
wreck in Chapter 13).
Industrial archaeologists study buildings and other structures of the Industrial
Revolution such as Victorian factories.
42 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory

Figure 2.5 The Parthenon in Athens.

(Goodshoot / Thinkstock by Getty Images)

Apart from area specialists, there are experts in all manner of archaeological meth-
ods, including paleoethnobotanists, who study ancient food remains; lithic technolo-
gists, who are experts on stone technology; and zooarchaeologists, specialists in ancient
animal bones. There are even some archaeologists who specialize in forensics – ancient
(and modern) crime.

Why Does Archaeology Matter?

Archaeology exercises a curious fascination. Cave people, golden pharaohs, lost cities
hiding in swirling mist: the fantasies abound. So do spectacular discoveries, such as the
Moche lords of Sipán, Peru, found intact in an adobe platform where they were buried
in A.D. 400 with all their gold and silver regalia (see Figure 2.6 and Figure 3.4 on pp.
43 and 64). Finds like Sipán or that of Ötzi the Ice Man, a Bronze Age traveler found
deep-frozen high in the Italian Alps (see Figure 13.4 on p. 312), are indeed fascinating,
even romantic, discoveries. Such scientific treasure troves appeal to the explorer and
adventurer in all of us and bring the past to life in dramatic ways.
Few modern-day discoveries generate the excitement experienced by three French
cave explorers when they entered a 30-inch-wide (76-centimeter-wide) cavity in the wall
of a gorge in the Ardèche Mountains of southeastern France on December 18, 1994.
Eliette Deschamps, Jean-Marie Chauvet, and Christian Hillaire squeezed through the
narrow opening. They felt a draft flowing from a blocked duct, pulled out the boul-
ders that blocked it, and saw a vast chamber 12 feet (3.6 meters) below them. Using a
 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory 43

Figure 2.6 A
 mannequin wears the full regalia of a Moche lord of Sipán, northern coastal
Peru, c. A.D. 400.
(Bert de Ruiter / Alamy)

rope ladder, they descended into a network of chambers adorned with natural calcite
columns. Calcified cave-bear bones and teeth lay on the floor, on which shallow depres-
sions marked where the long-extinct beasts had hibernated. Suddenly, Deschamps cried
out in surprise. Her lamp shone on a small mammoth figure painted on the wall. The
explorers moved deeper into the chamber and came across more paintings – positive
and negative hand imprints and figures of mammoths, rhinoceroses (Figure 2.7), and
cave lions. As they gazed at the paintings, the three explorers felt as if time were abol-
ished, as if the artists had left the cave only a few moments earlier. As one of them put
it, “The artists’ souls surrounded us. We felt we could feel their presence” (Chauvet,
Deschamps, and Hillaire, 1996: 42).
44 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory

Figure 2.7 G
 rotte de Chauvet, France: Horses and a woolly rhinoceros painted some 24,000 to
31,000 years ago by Cro-Magnon artists.
(Arterra Picture Library / Alamy)

The Grotte de Chauvet, named after one of the discoverers, lay undisturbed from the
time of the late Ice Age. Hearths on the floor looked as if they had been used the day
before. The explorers found an extraordinary frieze of black wild horses and oxen and
two woolly rhinoceroses facing one another. One 30-foot-long (9-meter-long) frieze of
black figures depicted lionesses, rhinoceroses, bison, and mammoths. Far to the right
stood a human figure wearing a bison-head mask, perhaps the shaman supervising the
immense frieze. Radiocarbon tests reveal that Grotte de Chauvet was visited repeatedly
between about 31,000 and 24,000 years ago, making it one of the earliest painted caves
in the world.

Mysteries of the Past

Chauvet’s Ice Age animals caused an international sensation, like Tutankhamun’s tomb
and Ötzi the Ice Man. But the fascination with archaeology is much wider, for the past
is redolent with unsolved mysteries and unexplained phenomena. You have only to
watch fantasy movies – which cover such hoary old favorites as the search for Noah’s
 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory 45
Ark, the curse of the pharaohs (made especially realistic in a memorable performance by
Boris Karloff as a hyperactive mummy in a movie of the 1930s), or the lost continent of
Atlantis – for an example of this fascination with the past. But such fantasy stories are little
more than pseudoarchaeology, no more historical fact than the Indiana Jones adventure
movies. More legitimate archaeological puzzles, such as how the ancient Egyptians built
the pyramids, or why the Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) people of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico,
built roadways leading nowhere (see Figure 5.10 on p. 116), intrigue audiences that are
much wider than merely archaeologists. Today, archaeology is as much a part of popular
culture as football or the automobile. Thousands of people read archaeology books for
entertainment, join archaeological societies, and flock to popular lectures on the past.

A Sideline: Pseudoarchaeology
Then there is pseudoarchaeology, which is not archaeology at all. Take a few intrepid
adventurers in an ancient sailing vessel, some startlingly new religious cult, a handful
of pyramids, lots of gold, and exotic civilizations swirling in ever-parting mists and you
have the irresistible ingredients for an epic “archaeological” tale. Pseudoarchaeology is
all the rage in a world where many people are fascinated by adventure, escapism, and
space fiction. A distinctive literary genre tells compelling tales of a long-lost past. For
instance, British journalist Graham Hancock has claimed that a great civilization flour-
ished under Antarctic ice 12,000 years ago. (Of course, its magnificent cities are buried
under deep ice sheets, so we cannot excavate them!) Colonists supposedly spread to
all parts of the world from this Antarctic home, colonizing such well-known sites as
Tiwanaku in the Bolivian highlands and building the Sphinx by the banks of the Nile.
Hancock weaves an ingenious story by piecing together all manner of controversial
geological observations and isolated archaeological finds. He waves aside the obvious
archaeologist’s reaction, which asks where traces of these ancient colonies and civiliza-
tions are to be found. Hancock fervently believes in his far-fetched theory, and, being a
good popular writer, he has managed to piece together a best-selling book, which reads
like a “whodunit” written by an amateur sleuth.
Pseudoarchaeology appeals to people who are impatient with the deliberate pace of
science and who like to believe that “there is always a faint possibility that …” Some of
these “cult archaeologies” show all the signs of becoming personality cults, even reli-
gious movements. The theories espoused by the leaders become articles of faith, the
object of personal conversion. They are attempts to give meaning to being human and
are often steeped in symbolism and religious activity. Almost invariably the cultists dis-
miss archaeologists as “elitists” or “scientific fuddy-duddies” because they reject wild
theories that are unsupported by scientifically gathered evidence.
This book describes the science of archaeology, which, ironically, can be more inter-
esting than the best fantasy tales.

Archaeology and Human Diversity

Archaeology’s unique ability lies in its capacity to reach back over the millennia to
reconstruct and explain the cultures and lifeways of unimaginably ancient societies as
they changed over many centuries and thousands of years. Why did some societies van-
ish without a trace while others developed agriculture or highly complex urban civiliza-
tions? Who first tamed fire or invented the plow? How did bronze and iron smelting
change the course of human history? Archaeology is fascinating because it enables us
46 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory
to study not only the remotest human origins but also the ever-changing biological and
cultural diversity of humankind.
We live in a complex world of almost bewildering human diversity. We can land
people on the moon, send space probes to Mars, establish our position in the midst of
tropical rain forests within inches, and build computers of mind-numbing speed and
complexity. Yet our collective understanding of human diversity and our ability to col-
laborate with others from different cultural backgrounds and cultural heritages remains
at an elementary level. We tend to fear diversity – people who are different from us, who
speak alien languages or look at the world with cultural perspectives that differ from our
own. We fear diversity, out of bigotry, but often just out of plain ignorance. Archaeology
is one of the major educational weapons in the fight against such ignorance.
The most important lesson about diversity that archaeology teaches us is that we are
all descended from what Harvard University biologist Stephen J. Gould once called
“a common African twig.” As long ago as 1871, the great Victorian biologist Charles
Darwin of Origin of Species fame theorized that humanity originated in Africa, because
this was where the greatest variety of apes dwelt. Today, we know that he was right.
More controversially, thanks to DNA studies and archaeological finds, we also suspect
that our own direct ancestors, Homo sapiens, originated on the same continent, then
spread out of Africa, replacing much older human populations. Most important of all,
both archaeology and DNA studies have shown that the relationships among all mod-
ern humans are closer than they are different. Above all, we are all humans with identi-
cal abilities to conceptualize and shape our world, to make inventions, to love and hate,
and to adapt to any environment on earth. We just happen to do it in different ways.
Archaeology studies diversity at its very beginnings, millennia before our intermin-
gled industrial world was changed forever by the massive population movements of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We seek answers to fundamental questions. Why
are we biologically and culturally diverse? In what ways are we similar or different?
When did the great diversity of humankind first come into being, and why? Both geneti-
cists and archaeologists suspect that we modern humans originated in tropical Africa,
then spread throughout the world during the late Ice Age, after 100,000 years ago. This
complex set of population movements and cultural changes was perhaps the seminal
development of early human history. From it stemmed not only the brilliant biological
and cultural diversity of modern humankind but also art and religious life, agriculture
and animal domestication, village life and urban civilization – the very roots of our own
diverse and complex world.
Archaeology provides a constant reminder of our common, and recent, biological
and cultural heritage in a world where racism is commonplace. Human artifacts are
excellent barometers not only of ancient behavior but also of cultural diversity. Early
historic American society was much more diverse than we realize (see Chapter 13).
Archaeologist Kathleen Deagan has excavated the site of Florida’s Fort Mose, the first free
African American community in North America. This tiny hamlet of some thirty-seven
families, 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from Spanish St. Augustine on the Atlantic coast, was
founded in 1738 and occupied until the Spanish abandoned Florida in 1763. In its hey-
day, the settlement of twenty-two thatched houses, a church, guardhouses, and a well
lay behind earthen fortifications. Many of the inhabitants were of West African origin
and used not only African artifacts but also objects of English, Native American, and
Spanish origin. Eventually, Deagan and her researchers hope to use the artifacts to
decipher what cultural elements were important in the lives of the inhabitants.
 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory 47

Archaeology as a Political Tool

Rulers and governments have used the past to justify the present since civilization
began. The Sumerians, who created the world’s first urban civilization between the
Euphrates and Tigris rivers in southern Iraq, created a heroic past personified by the
Epic of Gilgamesh, the story of a legendary king who ruled before a mythic flood that
frightened even the gods. When the waters subsided, they restored kingship to earth at
the city of Kish, where recorded history began.
The past has always served the present, for every society manufactures history. The
Aztecs of highland Mexico were an obscure farming society in A.D. 1200. Only three cen-
turies later, they ruled over all of Mesoamerica, that area of Central America where indi-
genous civilizations arose – an area straddling much of highland and lowland Mexico,
Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras – from a dazzling capital, Tenochtitlán, in the Valley of
Mexico (see Figure 6.4 on p. 136). In 1426, a powerful official named Tlacaelel became
the right-hand man to a series of fifteenth-century Aztec rulers in highland Mexico.
He prevailed on his masters to burn all earlier historical records of other cities in the
valley. In their place, he concocted a convincing rags-to-riches story that recounted the
Aztecs’ mercurial rise from obscurity to become masters of Mexico as the chosen people
of Huitzilopochtli, the sun god himself. The new history was blatant political propa-
ganda that justified a century of militant imperialism that made the Aztecs the rulers of
a vast empire.
No one can look at the past objectively. We all bring our individual cultural biases
and baggage to the study of history and archaeology, for we tend to look at past
developments and events through the blinkered eyes of our own value system and
society. Thus, any archaeological interpretation of the past is a form of narrative,
which, by the nature of its evidence, is both a scientific and political or literary enter-
prise. As part of this enterprise, archaeological theory aims to explain the past as well
as describe it.
Archaeology is peculiarly vulnerable to political misuse because it deals with ancient
societies and events that are little known, even from archaeological sources. Most
people who use the past for nationalistic or political ends are searching for a glorious
past, a simple story that justifies their own political agenda. The Nazis unashamedly
used archaeology before World War II to propagate notions of a true (and superior)
‘Aryan’ race in ancient Europe. In the former Yugoslavia, the past has been a prize in
endless political squabbles that go back centuries. Construction and ownership of a real
or imagined past and its monuments serves as a vital political resource when seeking to
sway public opinion. Such archaeologies are rarely based on scholarly standards of logic
and evidence. Most, at best, stretch historical facts to their breaking points and promote
bigotry, nationalism, and chicanery.
On the other side of the coin, archaeology, with its extended time perspectives,
has added entire new chapters to human history in areas of the world where written
records go back little more than a century. In parts of central Africa, for example, the
first documentary history begins with the establishment of colonial rule in about 1890,
with only a few Victorian explorers’ accounts dating from earlier decades. The primary
goal of archaeology in much of Africa is to write unwritten history as a way of fostering
national identity not from archives and documents but from long-abandoned villages
and rubbish heaps, the material remains of the past.
48 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory

Archaeology and Economic Development

Bone-chilling cold descended on the high plains around Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, that
night. White frost covered the dry hillsides where local farmers planted their pota-
toes in thin soil. Many families watched all night as their growing potatoes withered
and turned brown before their eyes. As dawn spread, they wandered through their
ruined fields, glancing down at a thin, white blanket of warm air covering some
experimental plots on the plain below. They had watched suspiciously as the archae-
ologists had dug across long-abandoned ancient fields in the lowlands, then given
one of their neighbors seed potatoes to plant in a replica of such a field. He piled
up layers of gravel, clay, and soil, then dug shallow irrigation canals alongside the
raised fields. The green shoots of the new potatoes grew far higher than those on
the arid slopes. As the temperature dropped below freezing, a white cloud of warm
air formed above the raised fields, hiding them from view. Now the warming sun
dispersed the white blanket, revealing lush, green potato plants, their leaves only
slightly browned by frost.
After months of ground survey, excavation, and controlled farming experiments,
archaeologists had rediscovered the forgotten genius of ancient Andean farmers for the
benefit of their descendants. The ancestors had used water to protect their crops against
frost with such success that they supported the glittering city of Tiwanaku and its
powerful kingdom for more than five centuries. Today, more than 1,500 modern farm-
ers have rediscovered the benefits of raised fields. Dozens of nearby communities now
clamor for training in ancient agriculture.
Archaeology shows how the traditional system has many advantages – high
crop yields, no need for fertilizer, and much-reduced risks of frost or flood damage.
Furthermore, high yields can be obtained with local labor, local crops, and no expensive
outside capital. At last count, nearly 2,125 acres (860 hectares) had been rehabilitated,
and many more fields are planned.
The Lake Titicaca raised-field experiments have been so successful that archae-
ologists are now actively involved in several other such projects in the Americas.
Governments are slowly discovering something that archaeologists have known for a
long time. The ancients knew their environments intimately and exploited them effi-
ciently without expensive twentieth-century technology. There is nothing wrong with
their often-forgotten ways of cultivating the soil and raising several crops a year, or
with their successful animal husbandry. Industrial-scale agriculture is not the universal
answer to the world’s food crisis.
Archaeologist William Rathje has applied archaeological methods to the study
of modern garbage dumps in Tucson and other American cities for a long time. He
has found that bags of abandoned household garbage never lie, for empty beer cans
and liquor bottles are more eloquent testimony to a family’s drinking habits than a
questionnaire response that denies heavy alcohol consumption. Rathje’s long-term
research has revealed fascinating differences between the wasteful discard habits of
many lower-income families and the habits of the wealthy, who are often more careful
to consume leftovers. It’s very easy to trivialize such research as being of greater use
to cat-food companies than to archaeologists, but “garbagology” has much to tell us
about the discard habits of modern industrial society. There are also important theor-
etical lessons for archaeologists investigating the middens of ancient Rome, Nineveh,
or Thebes.
 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory 49

Figure 2.8 The amphitheater at Epidauros, Greece.

(Panos Karapanagiotis / Thinkstock by Getty Images)

The Irresistible Lure of the Past

Armchair archaeology is one thing; to experience the sites and objects of the past first-
hand is another. The monuments of antiquity cast an irresistible spell. The jetliner,
the cruise ship, and the package tour have made archaeological tourism big business.
Fifty years ago only the wealthy and privileged could take a tour up the Nile, visit
Classical Greek temples, or explore Maya civilization. Now cruise ship excursions and
package tours can take you to Egypt, to the Parthenon (see Figure 2.5 on p. 42), and
to Teotihuacán, Mexico (see Figure 7.17 on p. 179). The immense pyramids of Giza in
Egypt (see Figure 2.2 on p. 34) and the prodigious labor that built them, the white col-
umns of the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion, Greece, touched with pink by the setting
sun, the ruins at the Maya city of Tikal bathed in the full moon’s light – as sights alone,
these overwhelm the senses.
One of us (BF) once sat in the great Classical amphitheater at Epidauros, Greece
(Figure 2.8), on a spring evening as the setting sun turned the world a pale pink. As
he sat high above the stage, a small group of German tourists gathered around their
learned guide. He sent them to the stall seats, stood at the center, and recited evocative
stanzas from Euripides’ play Ion. The ancient verses rolled and resonated through the
still air. For a moment, BF shut his eyes and imagined the theater crowded with a festive
audience, incense wafting on the spring air, the stanzas gripping everyone’s attention
with electric tension, then pathos. The guide’s voice ceased. A deep silence fell and the
magic of Epidauros’s acoustics faded.
50 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory
Visiting the past can be a deeply moving experience – the north wind blowing across
Hadrian’s Wall in northern England on a winter’s day with a promise of snow (see the
chapter opener photo on p. 30), or a muggy afternoon at Moundville, Alabama, when the
air stands still and the thatched huts and imposing mounds come alive in your mind
with fresh color, with the smell of wood smoke and the cries of children and barking
of dogs.
You can get the same emotional connection the first time you see pharaoh
Tutankhamun’s golden mask or the countenance of another great Egyptian, King
Rameses II, which lifts us to a realm where achievement endures and percep-
tions seem of a higher order. Even humble artifacts such as a stone chopper or a
finely made clay pot can evoke emotions of wonder and insight. Some years ago
while working on a desolate wind-blown site on the coast of Yemen, ND uncov-
ered a rare piece of intricately painted pot, once clearly a prized possession but
then broken or lost, and buried for almost 3,000 years. And, BF once turned a
2-million-year-old, jagged-edged chopper end over end in his hands, only to real-
ize from the flake scars that the ancient maker had been left-handed, and he felt
a sudden bond with the past. It is such moments that give the finder such a bond
with the past.
There are times when the remote past reaches out to us, comforting, encouraging,
offering precedent for human existence. We marvel at the achievements of the ancients,
at their awesome legacy to all humankind. This book describes some of the basic meth-
ods and theoretical approaches that archaeologists use to study the human past, to
reconstruct the long prehistory of humankind.

The Prehistory of Humankind According to Archaeologists

This book is concerned with the science of archaeology. So, before exploring the basic
principles of archaeology, we need to take a brief journey through the 2.5 million years
of human prehistory so that you have a framework of the basic developments at the
back of your mind as we delve deeper into archaeology (see Table 2.1).
Prehistory, the human past before written records, covers an enormous span of time,
starting more than 2.5 million years ago with the emergence of the first toolmaking
hominins (human-like beings) in East Africa and extending right into modern times.
A common, and conventional, distinction between prehistory and history is the exist-
ence of written records for historic times. In these periods, archaeological finds can be
amplified with documentary evidence. For example, there are inscribed clay tablets that
form the archives of the Sumerian peoples of Mesopotamia some 5,000 years ago, so
they are technically in historic times.
Prehistoric archaeologists are trying to document and understand the ways in which
humanity adapted itself to the many and diverse environments of the globe. By study-
ing these adaptations, we can begin to understand the astonishing diversity of human
cultures that make up our world.
For the sake of convenience, we can divide prehistory into a series of broad chapters,
each spanning long periods of time and increasingly complex cultural developments.
In fact, it is more appropriate to refer to these chapters as “developments,” for archae-
ologists are concerned, in the final analysis, with the study of evolving human cultures
over very long periods of time.
 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory 51
Table 2.1 Major developments in human prehistory.

Modern Times A.D. 1492, Columbus lands in the New World

Aztec and Inka civilizations flourish in Mexico and Peru

A.D. 1000 or later First settlement of New Zealand. Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon
A.D. 1 Teotihuacán, 200 B.C. to A.D. 750
Maya civilization flourishes in Mesoamerican lowlands (before
600 B.C. to A.D. 900 and beyond)
1200 B.C. Olmec civilization in Mesoamerica
1600 B.C. Cretan and Mycenaean civilizations in Mediterranean, Shang
civilization in China
2700 B.C. Indus civilization, Indus Valley, Pakistan
3100 B.C. Ancient Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations emerge in the
Near East
4000 B.C. Uruk in Mesopotamia, a sizable settlement, near-city
5000 B.C. Agriculture in Mesoamerica
6000 B.C. or earlier Agriculture in China
9500 B.C. Food production and animal domestication well established in
the Near East
12,000 B.C. End of the last Ice Age glaciation
15,000 B.C. First human settlement of the Americas(?)
35,000 years ago First settlement of Australia (possibly earlier)
45,000 years ago Homo sapiens (specifically Homo sapiens sapiens) begins
settlement of Europe
200,000 years ago Homo sapiens emerges, oldest-known examples from Ethiopia
350,000 years ago to Neanderthals found across Europe and Eurasia, also the Near
?33,000 years ago East
?800,000 to 600,000 years ago Homo heidelbergensis reaches Europe from its African homeland
1.8 million years ago Homo erectus (‘upright man’), first hominin found outside
Africa (known from many sites across Asia)
1.9 million years ago Homo ergaster (‘workman’) emerges in eastern and southern
Africa (previously routinely defined as Homo erectus)
2.4 million years ago Homo habilis (the ‘handyman’), first toolmaking hominins in
East and South Africa
4.5 million years ago Ardipithecus ramidus, the earliest bipedal (standing on two feet)
hominins in Africa; found in Ethiopia

Early Prehistory
The immensely long span of prehistoric time, from the emergence of toolmaking,
upright-walking hominins in tropical Africa 3.5 million years ago, up to the time around
200,000 years ago when modern human beings first appeared, is known as early pre-
history (Figure 2.9). This was the archaic world of early prehistoric times, when the
hominins evolved slowly into more advanced Homo ergastes some 1.9 million years ago.
(The African form was traditionally called Homo erectus, ‘upright man,’ but there is now
considerable disagreement over this assignation.) Cultural and social change was even
more glacially slow, with little fundamental change in human lifeways or technology for
more than a million years.
About 1.8 million years ago, these early human beings spread north out of the trop-
ics into more temperate latitudes, into Europe (Georgia) and also across Asia (notably
China, Java, and Indonesia), adapting to far greater climatic extremes. That they were
able to do so was in part the result of the control of fire – for heat, perhaps for cooking,
52 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory

Figure 2.9 T
 wo hominins of the species Australopithecus afarensis walk across a soft bed of vol-
canic ash at Laetoli, Tanzania, 3.5 million years ago. Their footprints were perfectly pre-
served in the ash and were excavated by the great paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey
in the 1970s.
(Raul Martin / MSF / Science Photo Library)

and certainly for protection against predators living in deep caves that were natural
shelters for human beings.
The hominin lineage (to which humans and all our ancestors belong) appears to split
from the rest of the great ape (or hominid) family in Africa 6–8 million years ago.
The relationships between these early hominins are complex and contested, but
among the most famous are the squat, heavily built Neanderthals of Eurasia, who
appear to share a common African ancestor (Homo heidelbergensis) with us modern
humans. However, the Neanderthals long predate our appearance, and are found
in Europe over 300,000 years before we modern humans even got there, flourishing
until about 33,000 years ago, during the intensely cold climate of the last Ice Age
glaciation.
 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory 53

The Origins and Spread of Modern Humans

About 200,000 years ago, perhaps somewhat earlier, our species, Homo sapiens, or ‘wise
man,’ evolved in the savanna woodlands of eastern and southern Africa. We are the
only surviving branch of the hominin family tree, and our oldest known ancestors –
195,000-year-old specimens found in the Omo Basin of Ethiopia – seem to represent an
evolutionary transition from African Homo heidelbergensis to the first modern humans.
While fossil evidence and genetic analysis pinpoints Africa as our homeland, with
the passage of time, we began to move ever further afield. As witnessed above, and
indicated in Figure 2.9, we were certainly not the first hominin species to make these
journeys out. Indeed, this fact has led to one of the most heated areas of controversy
within the field of human evolution: our relationship to the earlier species that migrated
out of Africa.
There are two major and conflicting models. The Regional Continuity Theory argues
that we developed out of archaic populations in many different places, while the Recent
Africa Origin theory proposes an African point of origin for our species with our spe-
cies emerging out of Africa and largely replacing earlier, archaic populations. Though a
minority of scientists still argues for the first model, the ever-emerging genetic and fossil
evidence favors the second.
According to this second model, modern humans began to leave Africa in earnest
sometime after 80,000 years ago. By this time Homo sapiens appears to have acquired the
full cognitive abilities that humankind possesses today – the ability to plan ahead, to
reason logically, and to innovate when the need arises.
Indeed, in perhaps the most dramatic chapter of the human past, Homo sapiens spread
widely over the Old World and into the New World (the Americas) during the closing
millennia of the Ice Age. Human beings had crossed into Australia by 45,000 years ago,
and perhaps as early as 60,000 years before the present. By 35,000 years ago, people had
developed the intricate technology needed to survive months of subzero winter cold.
They flourished in a deep-frozen Ice Age Europe and on the open plains that stretched
far northeast into Siberia. By 15,000 years ago, perhaps earlier, human bands had prob-
ably crossed into Alaska and the Americas. Only the far offshore islands of the Pacific
remained uninhabited by humans, awaiting the development of deep-water canoes and
offshore navigational techniques.

The Origins of Food Production

The worldwide thawing at the end of the Ice Age some 15,000 years ago led to dramatic
changes in global climate and geography. Human populations in the Old World and
the Americas had to adapt to radically new circumstances, to highly diverse postglacial
environments. It was in about 10,000 B.C. that some largely sedentary hunter-gatherer
communities in Southwest Asia started cultivating wild cereal grasses such as wheat
and barley, partly in response to a severe drought triggered by a sudden cold snap that
signaled a partial return to glacial conditions in the north. The new adaptation was
highly successful, even if it was first adopted as a means of perpetuating traditional
lifeways. Within a few centuries, village farmers were flourishing in many parts of the
region and soon further afield. The herding of goats, and then of cattle and pigs, soon
replaced hunting as a primary means of subsistence.
The new economies spread like wildfire, south through the Nile Valley and north
deep into Europe. Independent centers of plant and animal domestication may have
developed in India, Southeast Asia, and China within a few millennia. The cultivation
54 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory
of indigenous plants and cereals began in the Americas by at least 4000 B.C., probably
considerably earlier.
Some of the major controversies in archaeology surround the origins of food pro-
duction. Why did humans turn from hunting and gathering to agriculture and animal
herding, a development that led to immediate, long-term changes in global environ-
ments because of overgrazing, forest clearance, and plowing? The first scholars to
speculate about early agriculture searched for the village occupied by the genius who
had first planted wheat grains and watched them germinate into a new and predictable
food supply. No one has ever found this mythical genius. We now realize that farming
and the domestication of animals were complex changes in human culture that took
place over thousands of years, not only in Southwest Asia but in other areas of the
world as well. Was climate change responsible for food production, or was a multipli-
city of environmental, cultural, and social factors involved? The debate continues.
Throughout prehistory, human societies experimented with new ideas and technolo-
gies. Only a few caught on, and only a handful – among them agriculture, metalwork-
ing, writing, and wheeled transport – have profoundly affected the development of
human societies on a global scale.

The Origins of States (Civilizations)

Before 3000 B.C., new, highly centralized urban societies appeared in Egypt and
Mesopotamia (now southern Iraq). These were state-organized societies, preindustrial
civilizations headed by supreme rulers and governed by a bureaucracy of officials
and priests (for more discussion of states, see Chapter 13). (Preindustrial civilizations
depend on animal and human power; industrial civilizations depend on fossil fuels as
well.) People lived in much larger communities than in the past, in cities of more than
5,000 people, in societies with ranked social classes, under a social order where con-
formity was assured by the threat of force, and under an official religion that sanctified
the deeds of the tiny minority who ruled the state.
The Sumerians of Mesopotamia, the ancient Egyptians, the Indus civilization in
Pakistan, the Shang of northern China, and other early peoples were followed by much
larger empires and imperial civilizations – for example, those of the Persians, Greeks,
and Romans. The process of early state formation – still only partially understood – also
took hold in the Americas, where European explorers like Hernán Cortes came into con-
tact with amazingly sophisticated native American civilizations, such as the Aztecs of
Mexico and the Inka of Peru, in the fifteenth century A.D.
A continuous historical record takes us from the Sumerians of Mesopotamia through
biblical times right up to the conflicts and economic and technical achievements of
Western civilization.

European Expansion
The final chapter of prehistory coincides with the expansion of Western civilization out-
ward from its European homeland during the Age of Discovery after A.D. 1430. The
five centuries that followed found Westerners coming into contact with all manner of
human societies, covering the entire spectrum from Tasmanian hunting bands to the
civilizations of the Khmer of Cambodia and the Inka of the Andes. These were the cen-
turies when the world’s diverse societies were first drawn into what historians and
anthropologists sometimes refer to as a nascent world system – the system of economic
and political interconnectedness that is a dominant trend in today’s global economies.
 Introducing Archaeology and Prehistory 55
Prehistory, then, is the compelling story of unfolding human existence, a story that
began at a few locations in tropical Africa. The recorded archives of history take us back
to only a tiny fraction of our long past, which means that the study of prehistory has
much to tell us about why we are so similar and why we are so different.

SUMMARY
1. Archaeology is the systematic study of humanity in the past, not only of human
behavior and technology but also of every aspect of human culture.
2. The discipline is an integral part of anthropology, the study of humanity in the
broadest sense, with archaeologists studying past societies from all time periods.
3. There are many types of archaeologists. Classical archaeologists study ancient
Greece and Rome. Historical archaeologists study sites and societies that are also
recorded in written documents. Underwater archaeologists are specialists in ship-
wrecks and other underwater features, which are excavated like those on land to
acquire information about ancient societies. Cultural resource management (CRM)
is a major area of archaeology that involves managing the finite remains of the past.
4. Archaeology faces a major crisis as archaeological sites vanish in the face of looting
and industrial development. Tourism, too, is having a major impact on popular sites
now visited by tens of thousands of people.
5. Archaeologists have no monopoly on the past, for each society has its own world-
view and perceptions of history.
6. World prehistory as practiced by archaeologists is a global study concerned with the
following developments: early prehistory and human origins, the emergence and
spread of modern humans, the origins of food production, and early civilization.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What is archaeology’s unique contribution to human knowledge?
2. What is the difference between archaeology and pseudoarchaeology?
3. What is the major crisis facing archaeology, and what is causing it?

FURTHER READING
James Deetz, Invitation to Archaeology (Garden City, NY: Natural History Press, 1967), is a gem of
an essay on archaeology and covers many of the points in this chapter. So does Grahame Clark,
Archaeology and Society (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1965) – an older account dealing with the
political uses of archaeology that has never been bettered. Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips,
Method and Theory in American Archaeology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), is
a standard work. Kenneth L. Feder, Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries, 6th edn. (Mountain View,
CA: Mayfield, 2010), is a survey of pseudoarchaeology. Rose Macaulay, The Pleasure of Ruins
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1959), is a delight for tourists. Massimo Pallotino, The Meaning
of Archaeology (New York: Abrams, 1968), is a thoughtful account of the issues raised in this
chapter. Karl Meyer, The Plundered Past, 2nd edn. (New York: Athenaeum, 1993), is a popular
account of the international antiquities trade that makes for sobering reading. Things are even
worse today. Regrettably, there is little modern writing on the role of archaeology in today’s
world. For world prehistory, see Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani, People of the Earth, 14th edn.
(London: Routledge, 2015).
newgenprepdf

3 Culture and Context

CHAPT ER OU TL I N E
Human Culture 57
Cultural Systems 60
Culture Change 64
The Goals of Archaeology 66
Stewardship: Preserving the Past 66
Constructing Culture History 68
Reconstructing Ancient Lifeways 68
Explaining Cultural and Social Change 69
Understanding the Archaeological Record 70
The Archaeological Record 70
Archaeological Sites 70
Artifacts, Features, and Ecofacts 72
Context 74

Wall painting of horses at Pech Merle cave, Cabrerets, France, c. 17,000 years old, with hand
imprints made by Cro-Magnons.
(PRISMA ARCHIVO / Alamy)
 Culture and Context 57

PREVIEW
This chapter is about the basic principles of archaeology, fundamental concepts upon
which all archaeological research is based. Archaeologists study ancient human cul-
tures, so we begin by discussing the concept of culture, then the notion of cultural
systems, the assumption that human cultures are made up of many interacting compo-
nents. We describe the importance of culture change, for archaeology is a unique way of
studying changes in human society over long periods of time. The goals of archaeology
embrace not only setting ancient human societies in time and space but also reconstruct-
ing ancient human lifeways, explaining human behavior, and, above all, conserving the
past for future generations. We end by defining the archaeological record and some of
its components, all of which have a context in time and space.
Many times, while excavating in Africa, BF awoke on a cool winter’s morning deep
in the bush and watched a modern-day farming village close to our site come alive as
the sun rose. The air was still, a slight chill hugging the ground where dew glistened in
the soft light of dawn. He smelt wood smoke and cattle dung, saw figures wrapped in
blankets moving out to cattle enclosures or huddling around fires. The thatched huts
were still quiet as the timeless rhythm of another day began. He sensed the timeless-
ness of it all, the annual cycles of planting and harvest, birth, life, and death. Again and
again, he still thinks of the continuity between ancient and modern, for, like it or not, we
live with the past as well as the present. In places like Africa, where many people still
live much as their predecessors did centuries ago, the links between past and present
seem particularly strong. There, archaeology is anthropology as much as it is unwritten
history. Experiences like this – the scent of wood smoke, cows moving restlessly in their
pens, the soft murmurs of voices in the dawn – make one realize that archaeologists
have only the shreds and patches of the past with which to study ancient cultures.
In this chapter, we discuss the fundamental concepts of culture and culture change
and describe the goals of archaeology. We also describe the nature of archaeological evi-
dence and the all-important issue of “context” and what it means to the study of the past
(see the Discovery box).

Human Culture
Everyone lives within a cultural context, one that is qualified by a label like “middle-class
American,” “Roman,” or “Sioux.” These labels conjure up characteristic objects or behav-
ior patterns typical of the particular culture. We associate hamburgers with middle-class
American culture and kayaks with maritime Eskimos. Romans are thought to have spent
their time conquering the world, Sioux wandering over the Great Plains. But such stereo-
types are often crude, inaccurate generalizations. In fact, the label “American Indian” or
“Native American” is really a biological term that includes incredibly culturally diverse
peoples, ranging from family-size hunter-gatherer bands to large, complex civilizations.

Discovery
The Lords of Sicán, Peru, A.D. 900–1100
The Sicán culture flourished along the north coast of Peru from about A.D. 800 to 1100.
Sicán lords were buried with elaborate grave goods, including fine copper- and gold-alloy
objects. For years, looters have targeted their burials, many of them associated with the
58 Culture and Context

Figure 3.1 R
 econstructed gold mask of a lord of Sicán, Peru. The “drops” suspended from
the nostrils represent mucus formed during hallucinogenic trance, an important
part of Andean rituals. Height 39 inches (c. 100 centimeters).
(Peter Horree / Alamy)

82-foot-high (25-meter-high) Huaca Loro pyramid at Sicán’s capital. Izumi Shimada began
long-term research at the capital in 1978. His work involved a study of tomb contents and
construction and the excavation of a wide range of burials from all segments of Sicán
society.
The Huaca Loro mound lies atop an elite cemetery. So far, Shimada has excavated two
sepulchers. It took six months to excavate the East Tomb, a 33-foot (10-meter) vertical
shaft, 10 feet (3 meters) square with seven sealed niches. Five skeletons lay in the tomb,
as well as 12.2 tons of grave goods, two-thirds of which consisted of copper, gold, and
artifacts made of an alloy of gold, silver, and copper. The principal burial was that of a man
forty to fifty years old, whose body was mummified, painted with red cinnabar paint, and
then dressed in his full ceremonial regalia (see Figure 3.1). His head was separated from
his body, rotated right side up, and then placed in front of his inverted body. His regalia
included pectorals made with amber, amethyst, and other semiprecious stones, also a gold
ceremonial knife, ear spools, and a golden mask. A pair of golden gloves and a shin cover
lay by the body. A nearby chest contained at least twenty-four layers of rattles, crowns,
headbands, and other gold and alloy ritual objects.
Nearby lay a female adult with her legs flexed wide apart. Another woman sat in front of
her with her hands placed close to the first woman’s crotch. Shimada believes that the man
and the women were carefully positioned to symbolize the rebirth of the former.
This lord of Sicán owned a sumptuous array of gold objects and also a huge assem-
blage of other artifacts that give an impression of his enormous wealth and power – fifteen
bundles of unfinished cast bronze tools, 165 pounds (75 kilograms) of perforated, semi-
precious beads, and about 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) of hammered alloy sheet scraps.
 Culture and Context 59
All of these products would have required thousands of hours to produce. The lord lay with
179 spondylus shells and 141 conus sea shells, all imported from the coast of Ecuador
and other areas far to the north. Clearly, Sicán’s elite controlled widespread trade routes in
which bronze and produce from irrigation agriculture were major players.
Shimada is now excavating the West Tomb, which lies 82 feet (25 meters) to the west.
A man of thirty to forty years lay in a central chamber, surrounded by hundreds of arti-
facts and flanked by two women. About twenty women, mostly between eighteen and
twenty-two years old, lay in an antechamber, placed in equal numbers on the north and
south sides of the central chamber. Using DNA, ceramic styles, inherited dental character-
istics, and general health profiles, Shimada established that the women on the south side
were relatively healthy, included two kin groups, and were biologically close not only to
one another but to the principal individual buried in the tomb. They may even have married
within their own community. In contrast, those to the north were more heterogeneous bio-
logically and not as healthy. He theorizes that this group represented peoples conquered
by the Sicán lords.

Each human society has its own recognizable cultural style, which shapes the behav-
ior of its members, their political and judicial institutions, and their morals. Every trav-
eler is familiar with the distinctive flavor of various cultures that one experiences when
dining in a foreign restaurant or arriving in a new country. This distinctiveness results
from a people’s complex adaptation to greatly varied ecological, societal, and cultural
factors.
Human culture is unique because much of its content is transmitted from gener-
ation to generation by sophisticated communication systems. Formal education, reli-
gious beliefs, and day-to-day social intercourse all transmit culture and allow societies
to develop complex and continuing adaptations to aid their survival. Such communi-
cation systems also help rapid cultural change to take place, as when less technologic-
ally sophisticated societies come into contact with those with more effective technology.
Culture is a potential guide for behavior created through generations of human experi-
ence. It provides a design for living that helps mold responses to different situations.
Human beings are the only animals to use culture as the primary means of adapting
to the environment. Although biological evolution has protected the polar bear from
arctic winters, only human beings make thick clothes and igloos in the Arctic and live
in light thatched shelters in the tropics. Culture is an adaptive system; it is an inter-
face between ourselves, the environment, and other human societies. Through the long
millennia of prehistory, human culture became more elaborate. If this cultural buffer
were now removed, we would be helpless and most probably doomed to extinction. As
our primary means of adaptation, human culture is always adjusting to environmental,
technological, and societal change.
Language, economics, technology, religion, and political and social organization are
but a few of the interacting subdivisions of human culture. These elements shape one
another and blend to form a whole. For instance, the distribution of water and food
supplies as well as flexible social organization help determine the distribution of home
bases among the San hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa.
Culture is the dominant factor in determining social behavior; human society is the
vehicle that carries our culture. Societies are groups of interacting organizers. Insects
and other animals have societies, but only humans have culture as well.
What is culture? Anthropologists have tried to define this most elusive of theoretical
formulations for generations – a half century ago, there were over 200 definitions, with
many more in use today. All such definitions are concepts that are a means of explaining
60 Culture and Context
cultures and human behavior in terms of the learned, shared ideas held by a group of
people. One of the best general definitions was that put forth by the great Victorian
anthropologist Sir Edward Tylor more than a century ago. He wrote (1871: 4) that cul-
ture is “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom,
and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” To Tylor,
culture was learned – which is fine as far as it goes, but his definition is too simple at
anything but the most general level.
To make a sweeping generalization, archaeologists tend to look at culture in two dis-
tinct ways, with an adaptive view or with an ideational view.
Adaptive views assume that economics, technology, population densities, and ecology
are key factors in shaping human behavior. Adaptive strategies adopted by humans
ensure that their cultures operate in dynamic equilibrium with their ecosystems. Thus,
many archaeologists prefer to define culture in general terms as the primary non-
biological means by which human societies adapt to and accommodate their environ-
ment. Culture regulates relationships with the environment through technology and
social and belief systems.
Ideational approaches to culture focus on the complex sets of perceptions, conceptual
designs, and shared beliefs and understandings that underlie the ways in which people
live. In other words, culture is what people learn rather than what they make or do for a
living. Under this approach, you cannot understand human behavior without decoding
what goes on in people’s minds – what some scholars call a “cognitive code.”
Both approaches have great value, especially when used together (see Chapter 4).
Archaeology is the study of human behavior in the past, based on surviving remains of
human behavior. Inevitably, these remains are mainly durable items such as stone tools
and clay vessels. Many archaeologists throughout the world believe that ancient cultural
behavior was driven by primarily impersonal processes, such as environmental change,
population pressure, technological and economic innovation, and so on. Thus, they favor
adaptive approaches to the study of culture and often look for general (and anonymous)
laws of human behavior. This was the dominant approach to archaeology until the 1970s.
Today, many archaeologists are more interested in ancient cultural behavior as some-
thing driven by beliefs, ideas, symbolic visions of the world, and other intangibles. What
was the meaning of ancient artifacts? What roles did they play in the social environment
of the day? Under this approach, people are all-important – their interactions with one
another and the decisions they made that affected the outcome of historical events.
The debate over culture continues, with most archaeologists espousing an approach
that probably lies between these two extremes. Certainly, few researchers would argue
that one can look at human behavior only in people-oriented terms, for it is obvious that
ecological factors, among them climate change, were of great importance in shaping
human history.
The concept of culture provides anthropological archaeologists with a means for
explaining the products of human activity. When archaeologists study patterns of dis-
card, or the tangible remains of the past, they see a patterned reflection of the culture
that produced them, of the shared behavior of a group of prehistoric people. This pat-
terning of archaeological finds is critical, for it reflects patterned behavior in the past.

Cultural Systems
Archaeology can be very frustrating. BF remembers sitting in the middle of an ancient
African farming village that he had excavated over many months. His laboratory was
 Culture and Context 61
stacked high with boxes of animal bones, pot fragments, and other artifacts. Despite
weeks of excavation under the hot sun, he felt a deep sense of frustration, for there was
so much about the inhabitants that was hidden from him. As the afternoon shadows
lengthened, he found himself conjuring up a living village on the now-silent mound. As
images of huts and cattle enclosures passed through his mind, he felt an overwhelming
desire for a few minutes of conversation with the ancient inhabitants. So much was lost,
so much was intangible and beyond reconstruction with the archaeologist’s spade.
Herein lies the great challenge of archaeology, whatever your theoretical approach
to culture: not only reconstructing the material but also trying to comprehend highly
perishable aspects of human cultures – long-vanished religious beliefs and social inter-
actions, the day-to-day transactions between individuals, within families, and with a
wider world that make up our lives.
So far, no one has been able to dig up a religious philosophy or an unwritten lan-
guage. Archaeologists have to work with the tangible remains of human activity that
still survive in the ground. But these surviving remains of human activity are radic-
ally affected by intangible aspects of human culture. All cultures reflect their owners’
worldview, their idea of the universe in which they live. In many ancient societies, the
living and spiritual worlds were thought of as one, so that religious beliefs and sym-
bolism affected architecture, art, and the design of ceremonial artifacts. Great Maya cit-
ies like Copán and Tikal were reproductions in stone and stucco of the supernatural
world of trees (carved uprights), sacred mountains (pyramids), and openings to the
Otherworld (caves and temple entrances). The same kinds of symbolism affected arti-
fact design in many cultures. Eighteen hundred years ago, the Hopewell people of the
American Midwest traded, over enormous distances, finely made ornaments fashioned
of hammered copper sheet (see Figure 3.2). These ornaments turn up in Hopewell burial
mounds. The copper technology that made them was simple, but the symbolism behind
the artifacts was not. They were probably exchanged between important individuals as
symbolic gifts denoting kin ties, economic obligations, and other social meanings that
are beyond the archaeologist’s ability to recover. Thus the artifacts found in an excava-
tion reflect not only ancient technology but also the values and uses that a society placed
on such objects. Ancient tools are not culture in themselves, but a patterned reflection of
the culture that produced them. Such patternings provide a link between archaeological
remains and the behavior of their makers.
When considering ancient relationships with the natural environment, we’ve always
found it helpful to think of cultures as systems of different, interacting parts, which
interact, in turn, with their ever-changing environments. In thinking this way, we and
many other archaeologists have been strongly influenced by the work of anthropolo-
gist Leslie White. In the 1950s, he studied people’s means of adapting to their environ-
ment. He argued that human culture is made up of many structurally different parts
that articulate with one another within a total cultural system. This cultural system
is the means whereby a human society adapts to its physical and social environment.
White’s formulation is a useful conceptual tool for studying the past, even if theoretical
approaches to cultural systems vary widely from one archaeologist to another.
Within this perspective, all cultural systems articulate with other systems, which also
are made up of interacting sets of variables. One such system is the natural environ-
ment. The links between cultural and environmental systems are such that a change
in one system is linked to changes in the other. Thus a major objective of archaeology
is to understand the linkage between the various parts of cultural and environmental
systems as they are reflected in archaeological data. It follows that archaeologists study-
ing cultural systems are more interested in the relationships between activities and tools
62 Culture and Context

Figure 3.2 H
 opewell bird claw in mica. The Hopewell people traded such prestigious objects over
great distances in eastern North America during the first millennium B.C.
(Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy)

within a cultural system than in the activities or tools themselves. They are profoundly
interested in cultural systems within their environmental context and in the intangible
beliefs and values that helped create them.
To be workable, any human cultural system depends on its ability to adapt to the
natural environment. A cultural system can be broken down into all manner of subsys-
tems: religious and ritual subsystems, economic subsystems, and so on. Each of these
is linked to the others. Changes in one subsystem, such as a shift from cattle herding to
wheat growing, cause reactions in many others. Such relationships give the archaeolo-
gist a measure of the constant changes and variations in human culture that can accu-
mulate over long periods as cultural systems respond to external and internal stimuli.
The systems approach also has value when looking at the ideas and beliefs behind
an ancient culture. By examining the systematic patternings of archaeological finds, we
can discover more about the intangible aspects of human behavior. By dropping their
possessions on the ground or burying their dead in certain ways, people have left vital
information about many more elements in their cultural system than merely their tools
or skeletal remains (see Figure 3.3). One can examine the relationship between individ-
ual households by comparing the artifacts left by each; one can study trading practices
by analyzing the products of metalsmiths; one can discover religious beliefs by map-
ping temple architecture. Also, the carefully arranged grave offerings in a royal burial
chamber tell much about the leaders of the society.
 Culture and Context 63

Soil

Stones packed over

burial chamber

Thatch

Planks

Male burial
Bedding trench

Female
Gold burial
Daggers and
chisels Axes, Pot
halberd, etc.
Ft.
M.

Battle-
Ft. ax

M.
Roof timbers

N
Figure 3.3 A
 wooden burial house from Leubingen, Germany. The two burials were deposited
in a wooden house under a mound. The archaeologist not only recovers the burials
and the objects with which the bodies were buried but also reconstructs the burial
layout and sequence of construction of the burial house. Further, the excavator tries
to infer the funerary rituals from the artifact patterning and the structures under
the mound.

Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva spent months in 1988 painstakingly excavating

the royal tombs of the Moche lords of Sipán on the north coast of Peru. He revealed
valuable information about the role of these individuals in Moche society in about
A . D . 400.
Tomb I held the body of a man in his late thirties or early forties. The mourners had
built a brick burial chamber deep in the pyramid, building the sepulcher like a room,
with solid mud-brick benches along the sides and at the head end. They set hundreds of
clay pots in small niches in the benches. Priests dressed the dead lord in his full regalia,
including a golden mask, and wrapped his corpse and regalia in textile shrouds. Then
they placed him in a plank coffin and set it in the center of the burial chamber, the lid
secured with copper straps. They laid out more ceramics, mainly fine spouted bottles, at
the foot and head of the coffin. Next, someone sacrificed two llamas and placed them on
either side of the foot of the coffin. At some point, the priests also sat the body of a nine-
or ten-year-old child in poor health at the head of the warrior-priest (see Figure 3.4).
The mourners then lowered five cane coffins into the grave, each containing the body
of an adult. The two male dead, perhaps bodyguards or members of the lord’s entou-
rage, were each laid on top of one of the llamas. One was a strongly built male, over
thirty-five years old, adorned with copper ornaments and laid out with a war club. The
64 Culture and Context

Figure 3.4 Burial chamber of a lord of Sipán, Peru.

(wening / Alamy)

other bore a beaded pectoral and was between thirty-five and forty-five years old. Two
of the three women’s coffins lay at the head of the royal casket; in the third, at the foot
of the coffin, the woman had been turned on her side. Interestingly, the women’s disar-
ticulated and jumbled bones suggest they were not sacrificial victims, for they had died
long before the lord and were partly decomposed at the time of their burial. Perhaps
they had been wives, concubines, or servants. Once the coffins had been positioned, a
low beam roof was set in place, too low for someone to stand inside the chamber. Then
the tomb was covered, a footless male victim being laid out in the fill. Finally, a seated
body with crossed legs watched over the burial chamber from a small niche in the south
wall, about 3 feet (1 meter) above the roof.
The Sipán burial revealed not only minute details of lordly regalia but also priceless
information on the intricate symbolism of the sun and moon that lay behind many of
the ornaments (see Figure 4.7 on p. 97). Archaeologist Christopher Donnan analyzed
painted motifs on Moche pots to suggest that the buried lord was a warrior-priest,
interred in his full regalia, who had once presided over sacrifices of prisoners of war.

Culture Change
The notion of cultural systems is widely used in archaeology as a means of explaining
cultural and social change. The argument is as follows. Every cultural system is in a con-
stant state of change. Its various political, social, and technological subsystems adjust to
 Culture and Context 65

Figure 3.5 C
 hanging automobile styles reflect both design advances and safety considerations, as
well as shifting fashions.

changing circumstances. We ourselves live in a time of rapid cultural change, in which

measurable differences set apart different ten-year periods. We would find it hard to
identify the thousands of minor daily cultural changes that occur, but we can easily rec-
ognize the cumulative effects of these minor changes over a longer period.
Consider the many minor changes in automobile design over the past decades. In
themselves the changes are not very striking, but if one looks at the cumulative effect
of several years’ steady change toward safer cars – energy-absorbing bumpers, padded
steering wheels and dashboards, air bags, seat belts, more aerodynamic shapes – the
change is striking. The automobile of today is different from that of the 1960s, and many
of the changes are due to stricter governmental safety regulations, which in turn are due
to greater public safety consciousness (see Figure 3.5). Here we see a major cumulative
change in part of our enormous technological subsystem. By examining the relationship
between technological and political subsystems, we can understand the processes by
which culture changes.
The word process implies a patterned sequence of events, one event leading to another.
A contractor builds a three-bedroom house in an ordered sequence of events, from
foundation footings up to final painting. (Archaeological research itself has a process –
designing a research project, collecting and interpreting data, publishing the results.) To
analyze a cultural process, we attempt to consider all of the factors that cause changes
in human culture and how they affect one another.
How did human cultures change in the past? What cultural and social processes
came into play when people began to cultivate the soil or when complex and elaborate
urban states developed 5,000 years ago?
As we saw in Chapter 1, new discoveries like agriculture or ironworking were once
thought to have spread throughout the world by mass migrations or by long-distance
trading over continents and oceans. But as more and more archaeological data have
accumulated in all corners of the world, people have realized that such straightforward
explanations of cultural process as universal evolution, or the spread of all ideas from
one place of invention, are simplistic and do not reflect reality.
Most changes in human culture have been cumulative, occurring slowly over a long
period of time. Ancient Egyptian civilization began with the unification of Upper and
Lower Egypt into a single state by the pharaoh Horus-Aha in about 3100 B.C. Intensively
conservative and seemingly unchanging, Egyptian civilization endured for 3,000 years,
until the Nile Valley became part of the Roman Empire. This impression of unchan-
ging civilization is misleading for, in fact, the institutions of Egyptian kingship devel-
oped long before the unification of the state and evolved constantly as circumstances
66 Culture and Context
changed along the Nile. The basic institutions remained much the same, but the phar-
aohs trimmed their rule to accommodate new technologies and new political and social
circumstances. One of the reasons Egyptian civilization endured so long was that it was
flexible enough to adjust to widely fluctuating Nile flood levels and changing outside
political conditions. Studying these often subtle processes of cultural change requires
highly sophisticated research work.
Processes of culture change in prehistory were the result of constantly changing
adaptations to a myriad of external environments. Cultural systems were constantly
adjusting and evolving in response to internal and external feedback. Clearly, no one
element in a cultural system is a primary cause of culture change, because a complex
range of factors – vegetation, technology, social restrictions, and population density, to
mention only a few – interact with one another and react to a change in any element in
the system. From the ecologist’s point of view, therefore, human culture is merely one
element of the ecosystem, a mechanism whereby people adapt to this environment. This
viewpoint provides a useful framework for much modern archaeological research and
for studying cultural process, although, of course, cultural systems encompass much
more than merely environmental adaptation.
By no means does every researcher agree with the systems approach; some think that
it promotes a mechanistic and anonymous way of studying culture change. They argue
that other factors play an important role, especially the roles of individuals and groups
in making history – archaeology being a part of history.
In truth, there is no one overarching perspective on culture and culture change that
replaces either systems or more idea-based approaches. Today, there is tremendous
theoretical diversity both in approaches to archaeology and in approaches to culture
and culture change – which is probably healthy, given the enormous time range of the
human past and the remarkable array of societies that have flourished on earth, all with
their own perspectives on the world.
We look more closely at ways in which people have sought to interpret ancient cul-
tural and social change in Chapter 4.

The Goals of Archaeology

The archaeologist has one primary and overriding priority: to preserve and conserve the
material remains of the past for future generations, called stewardship.
Archaeological sites and their contents are a unique record of our forebears in every
part of the world. Unlike trees, this archive of the past, the archaeological record, is
finite. Once disturbed or excavated, the record is gone forever. Conserving this priceless
asset is our greatest responsibility to the past, whether as professional archaeologists or
laypeople.
All archaeological research has five important goals, each of which intersects with the
others. Three of them are predominantly academic (see Figure 3.6).

Stewardship: Preserving the Past

The most fundamental objective of archaeology is to conserve, manage, and preserve
the archaeological record of the past for future generations. This overriding objective
has assumed major importance in recent years. Archaeological sites are precious, finite
resources, and they are vanishing at a breathtaking rate. Already, most archaeological
fieldwork around the world is devoted to salvage work and general management of the
 Culture and Context 67

Figure 3.6 Three primary scholarly goals of archaeology.

68 Culture and Context
surviving archives of the past, often called cultural resource management (CRM) (see
Chapter 14, “Managing the Past”). It is now the dominant paradigm in archaeology.

Constructing Culture History

Culture history is an approach to archaeology that assumes that artifacts can be used
to build up generalized pictures of human culture in time and space, and that these can
be interpreted. Culture history is the record of the human past described and classified
in a context of time and space, which describes the past across the changing ancient
landscape. In other words, it answers the fundamental question: What happened where
and when?
Culture history relies on careful excavation, detailed classifications of finds of all
kinds, and accurate sequences of human cultures defined through time and by spatial
distribution.
Until the 1950s, culture history dominated archaeological research. For example,
during the 1930s, teams of archaeologists surveyed major river valleys in the south-
eastern United States in advance of dam construction. They found hundreds of archaeo-
logical sites, which they dated using sequences of stone tool and pottery forms. These
now-classic surveys tell us a great deal about what happened in these river valleys and
when, but they tell us little about the ways in which the various river valley societies
lived or why they became more complex and took up maize agriculture over the past
2,000 years.
Culture history is the vital first stage of all archaeological research. You cannot exam-
ine more detailed questions until you have a clear idea of what happened in a region
and when. In many parts of the world – for example, Southeast Asia – archaeological
research has hardly begun. Many archaeologists working in Cambodia or Thailand still
have a primary concern for culture history. This focus will change once the basic frame-
work of the past is in place. Some of the basic principles of culture history are described
in Chapters 4 and 8.

Reconstructing Ancient Lifeways

Archaeology is also the study of ancient human behavior – of people, not their artifacts.
Stone tools, potsherds, iron weapons, houses, and other material remains are indeed
the raw materials for classifying the past, but we should never forget they were made
by people – men and women, adults and children, members of different households,
communities, and societies. Logically, then, our second major goal is the reconstruction
of how people made their living, the study of ancient lifeways.
The word lifeways covers many human activities, everything from hunting and plant
gathering to agriculture, interactions between individuals and groups, social organiza-
tion, and religious beliefs. Some of archaeology’s best detective work reconstructs these
activities, which, for convenience, can be grouped into the following broad categories.

Subsistence How people make their living or acquire food – subsistence – is stud-
ied by using fragmentary animal bones, seeds, and other surviving evidence of
ancient human diet and subsistence activities (see Chapter 11).
Environmental Modeling Subsistence activities depend heavily on a society’s
relationship with the natural environment. This means that studying ancient
subsistence goes hand-in-hand with reconstruction of changing prehistoric envir-
onments (see Chapter 10).
 Culture and Context 69
Human Interactions People act out their lives at many levels: as individuals; as
men, women, and children; as members of families, communities, and cultures.
They may be divine rulers, merchants, artisans, common farmers, or slaves.
Reconstructing lifeways means examining evidence of changing sex roles, assess-
ing the importance of social ranking within societies, and reconstructing the com-
plex mechanisms by which people exchanged exotic raw materials or precious
artifacts over enormous distances.

Much cutting-edge research revolves around “people” questions, especially such

issues as changing gender roles and the distinctive activities of inconspicuous and often
historically anonymous minorities in large cities. We identify people from their arti-
facts, which are the products of cultural traditions handed down over generations (see
Chapter 13).
For instance, the great city of Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico attracted traders
from every corner of the Mesoamerican world. The Teotihuacános ran a vast urban mar-
ket that attracted people from all over the Mexican highlands and lowlands to trade
everything from gold dust to tropical bird feathers. So lucrative and essential were
some of these trading activities that the city authorities allowed foreigners from the
distant Veracruz lowlands and the valley of Oaxaca to live in their own compounds in
Teotihuacán. We know this because the distinctive clay vessels characteristic of these
two areas have come to light in several of the city’s neighborhoods.

Social Organization and Religious Beliefs

Archaeologists are increasingly concerned with such intangibles as social organization
and religious beliefs. Of course, we can never hope to capture the transitory events of
the past such as the momentary ecstasy of a shaman’s trance or a colorful dance per-
formed in a plaza at Teotihuacán. However, artifacts, art styles, even entire temples and
cities, are mirrors of the intangible, allowing us a fleeting glance into the social and spir-
itual worlds of ancient societies (see Chapter 4).

Explaining Cultural and Social Change

Archaeology is a search for both facts and explanations. The third major objective of
archaeology is to study and explain cultural and social change (see Chapter 4). Such
research attacks fundamental questions: After tens of thousands of years of hunting and
plant gathering, why did people living over a huge area of southwestern Asia change
over to agriculture before 10,000 B.C.? What caused Maya civilization in the southern
Mesoamerican lowlands, with its huge cities and powerful lords, to collapse in A.D. 900?
Why did no one settle the offshore islands of the Pacific until about 3,000 years ago?
Studying the processes of cultural and social change is among the most challenging
parts of archaeological research. In Chapter 4, we describe some of the complex theoret-
ical models that attempt to reconstruct such major developments as the origins of agri-
culture and the development of complex, urban civilizations. As we saw in Chapter 1,
there are two broad schools of thought, one ecological and evolutionary, more concerned
with ecosystems, and the second historical materialistic, placing major emphasis on the
actions of people and groups in causing culture change.
The three main scholarly objectives of archaeology flow one into the other. A study
of ancient lifeways depends on precise culture history, while an explanation of cultural
processes requires large quantities of historical, environmental, and lifeway data of cul-
ture to be meaningful.
70 Culture and Context

Understanding the Archaeological Record

Our observations about the past are made today, for we describe sites and artifacts as
they come from the soil centuries or thousands of years after they were abandoned.
Historians can read a document written by a contemporary observer in, say, 1492, which
conveys information that has not changed since that year. Archaeologists study a record
buried in the soil, which has usually undergone drastic change owing to different pres-
ervation conditions. The American archaeologist Lewis Binford described archaeo-
logical data as being somewhat akin to an untranslated language, which we have to
decode if we are to understand human ancient behavior. The challenge that archaeology
offers, then, is to take contemporary observations of static material things like ancient
projectile points and, quite literally, translate them into statements about the dynam-
ics of past ways of life. Controlled experiments that replicate ancient technologies and
observations of living hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers are an important part
of this process of bridging the chasm between past and present (see Chapter 9, “The
Present and the Past”).

The Archaeological Record

Archaeologists construct ancient cultures from archaeological data, the material remains
of the past. This material data, archaeological evidence if you will, comes in many
forms – as an entire city, a humble farmer’s dwelling, the golden mask of the Egyptian
pharaoh Tutankhamun, or a scatter of broken bones or stone tools. Such data make up
the archaeological record.
Archaeology is based on the scientific recovery of data from the ground – on the sys-
tematic excavation and recording of the archaeological record as it survives in sites as
artifacts, food remains, and other finds.

Archaeological Sites
The archaeological site is a place where traces of ancient human activity are to be found.
It is the archaeologist’s archive, in much the same way as government files can yield a
day-by-day record of historical events. Sites are normally identified through the manu-
factured tools, or artifacts, found in them. They can range in size from a huge pre-
historic city, such as Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico, to a small meat cache used
by hunter-gatherers at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. An archaeological site can consist
of a human burial, a huge rockshelter occupied over millennia, or a simple scatter of
stone tools found on the floor of Death Valley, California. Sites are limited in number
and variety by preservation conditions and the activities of the people who occupied
them. Some were used for a few short hours, others for a generation or two. Some,
like Mesopotamian city mounds, were major settlements for hundreds, even thousands,
of years and contain numerous separate occupation layers. The great mounds of the
city of Ur in Mesopotamia contain many occupation levels, which tell the story of a
long-established ancient city that was abandoned when the River Euphrates changed its
course away from the settlement (see Figure 1.2 on p. 5).
Archaeological sites are most commonly classified according to the activities that
occurred there. Thus cemeteries and other sepulchers, like Tutankhamun’s tomb,
are referred to as burial sites. A 20,000-year-old Stone Age site in the Dnieper Valley
in Ukraine, with mammoth-bone houses, hearths, and other signs of domestic
 Culture and Context 71

Figure 3.7 T he Acropolis complex at Copán, Honduras, as drawn by Tatiana Proskouriakoff. The
ceremonial precincts of Copán are surrounded by several square kilometers of residen-
tial quarters and outlying settlements, making it one of the largest pre-Columbian cities
in the Americas. The pyramids and plazas of central Copán were laid out as a symbolic
representation of the Maya sacred world, complete with sacred mountains (pyramids),
with the temple entrance at the top of the pyramid serving as the symbolic entrance to
the underworld.
(Gift of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. © President and Fellows of Harvard College,
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, PM # 50-63-20/18487
Digital file # 151070061)

activity, is a habitation site. So are many other sites, such as caves and rockshelters, early
Mesoamerican farming villages, and Mesopotamian cities – in all of these, people lived
and carried out greatly diverse activities. Kill sites, such as those found in East Africa
and on the North American Great Plains, consist of bones of slaughtered game animals
and the weapons that killed them. Quarry sites – where people mined stone or metals to
make specific tools – are another type of specialized site. Prized raw materials, such as
obsidian, a volcanic glass used for making sharp-edged stone tools, mirrors, and other
artifacts, were widely traded in prehistoric times and are of profound interest to the
archaeologist. Then there are spectacular ceremonial and religious sites such as the stone
circles of Stonehenge in southern England; the Temple of Amun at Karnak, Egypt; and
the great ceremonial precincts of lowland Maya centers in Central America at Tikal,
Copán, and Palenque (see Figure 3.7). Art sites are common in southwestern France (see
Figure 2.7 on p. 44), southern Africa, and parts of North America, where prehistoric
people painted or engraved magnificent displays with deep, and still little understood,
72 Culture and Context

symbolic meaning. Some French art sites are more than 30,000 years old. Each of these
site types reflects a form of human activity, which is represented in the archaeological
record by specific artifact patterns and surface indications found and recorded by the
archaeologist.

Artifacts, Features, and Ecofacts

Artifacts are objects found in archaeological sites that exhibit attributes resulting from
human activity. The term covers every form of portable archaeological find, from stone
axes to gold ornaments, as well as food residues such as broken bones. Features are struc-
tures such as houses, hearths, storage pits, and so on. They can also include buried fields,
workshop areas, and drainage systems. Artifacts are distinguished from non­artifacts
simply because artifacts display patterns of humanly caused features, or attributes.
These objects can be classified according to their distinctive attributes. Artifacts are the
product of human ideas, ideas that people had about the way objects should look or be
used. Every culture has its own rules that limit and dictate the form of artifacts. Our own
society has definite ideas of what a fork should look like, or an automobile, or a pair of
shoes. We are so familiar with the artifacts of other cultures that seeing, say, a skin kayak,
we at once identify it as “Eskimo” (in Canada, Inuit).
Most craft skills, such as stone toolmaking, pottery manufacture, basketry, and metal-
lurgy, are learned by each new generation. Each generation passes the skills on to the
next, usually resulting in relatively slow, sometimes very slow, changes in artifacts and
artifact technology. This inborn conservatism, which we might call tradition, strongly
influences perpetuation of artifact forms.
The differences within a group of similar artifacts, such as stone projectile points,
may reflect varied ideas behind them. Archaeologists study and classify artifacts, as
we discuss in Chapter 8. These classifications are really research devices by which we
study the products of human behavior and, indirectly, human behavior itself. For the
archaeologist, every artifact has a number of attributes – identifiable properties that
combine to give the object its distinctive form.
The vessel illustrated in Figure 3.8 has several obvious attributes: painted motif, rounded
base, and so on. Each of these attributes contributes to the form of the pot and each was
part of the mental template that produced it. Each attribute has a different reason for being
there. The band of decoration is purely ornamental, part of the decorative tradition among
the people who made it. The shape of the pot is determined by its function – it was designed
for carrying liquids and for cooking, for which a bag-shaped, round-bottomed body is
essential. Attributes can be present for traditional, functional, technological, or other rea-
sons. Occasionally a new attribute appears – a new decorative motif, perhaps – which may
vanish just as fast as it appeared. Why? Because it did not catch on with other potmakers.
Occasionally, too, a new attribute may achieve wide popularity and be adopted by every-
one. Then the innovation becomes part of the pottery tradition.
The dictates of fashion and style play an important role in the changes that occur
in attributes over short and long periods of time. These fashions and the styles asso-
ciated with them are a major factor in studying culture change. To take a relatively
modern analogy, Victorian explorers who penetrated deep into the East African inter-
ior traveled in caravans laden with cheap imported goods such as glass beads, cotton
cloth, and iron hoes. Sometimes they would find that the trade goods they brought
with them to barter for food – goods once thought to be prime commodities – were no
 Culture and Context 73

Figure 3.8 M
 imbres painted vessel from the American Southwest showing a big horn sheep.
Attributes include rim shape, height, paint colors, design motif, clay composition,
and so on.
(John Cancalosi / Alamy)

longer of interest to people in the interior. Fashions had changed, and different bead
colors had assumed greater desirability. If one were to investigate sites where such
trade was taking place over several centuries, one would find changes in proportions
of different bead types, shapes, and colors. In this case, they are the result of changing
fashions.
The archaeologist is deeply concerned with how artifacts vary and with the changing
forms of the many manufactured objects found in archaeological sites. Variation in the
form of artifacts is a complex subject, but one of critical importance to archaeologists.
It’s the cumulative result of thousands of minor changes in dozens of different artifacts
that provides the tangible evidence for culture change in the prehistoric past. And that,
as we have seen, is a major concern to anyone studying prehistory.
Ecofacts are archaeological finds of cultural significance that were not manufactured
by humans. These include bones and plant remains.
The archaeological record, whether a site or an artifact, a seed or an entire city, has a
context in time and space, which we must now define.
74 Culture and Context

Context
The thin line of the 1,000-year-old cattle-dung-covered hut floor appeared in the bottom
of the trench, a hard semicircular patch of fire-baked clay lined on its outer side with
the charred bases of wall posts. We removed the overlying ashy soil with slow care,
using trowels, then paintbrushes, to ease the matrix off the long-abandoned floor sur-
face. Three large boulders appeared in the soil. We brushed them off, exposing a patch
of charcoal between them, also a broken ox jaw and the broken fragments of a small clay
pot. The exposed floor was about 10 feet (3 meters) across, with the hearth set near the
center of the house. Before we lifted the hearth, artifacts, and hut floor, we measured the
exact position of every find and feature three-dimensionally, tying our measurements
into a site grid linked in turn to the map of the area. BF remembers thinking as we took
up the boulders that in themselves they were just three large stones. Taken together,
plotted in relationship to the charcoal and artifacts, they became something quite dif-
ferent. They told a story of long-forgotten household behavior. The finds had a context.
Artifacts are found in archaeological sites. Archaeological sites are far more than just
concentrations of artifacts, however. They can hold the remains of dwellings, burials,
storage pits, craft activities, and sometimes several occupation levels. Each artifact, each
broken bone or tiny seed, every dwelling, has a relationship in space and time to all of
the other finds made in the site. An artifact can be earlier than, contemporary with, or
later than its neighbors in the soil. A thousand obsidian flakes and half-completed pro-
jectile heads scattered over an area several square feet in diameter are, in themselves,
merely stone fragments. But the spatial patterning of all the fragments is significant,
for it tells us something of the various manufacturing activities carried out by the per-
son who flaked the thousand fragments from chunks of obsidian. In this instance, and
many others, the context of the artifacts in time and space is vital (see the section on
site-formation processes in Chapter 9).
To every archaeologist, an artifact is of limited value without this context. The
museums and art galleries of the world are filled with magnificent artifacts that have
been collected under circumstances that can only be described as highly unscientific.
Generations of treasure hunters have ravaged ancient Egyptian cemeteries and dug up
thousands of pre-Columbian pots for museums and private collectors. Few of these
objects have any archaeological context. Any expert can look at a pre-Columbian pot
and say at once, “Classic Maya.” But, alas, rarely will our expert be able to consult
excavation records and say, “Classic Maya, Level VIB from Temple of the Inscriptions
Palenque, excavation c. 1976, associated with burial of an adult male, thirty-five years
old, date about A.D. 680.” An artifact removed from its context in space and time in an
archaeological site is merely an object that yields only limited cultural information. An
artifact carefully excavated from a recorded archaeological context is an integral part of
history, and as such has far more significance.
Archaeologists distinguish primary context, the original position of an artifact in
time and space. This can be a situation such as, for example, an undisturbed burial in an
earthen mound, where the original context in time and space still exists. Secondary con-
texts arise when a primary context is disturbed by later human or natural activity. For
instance, a few generations later, another burial may be deposited in the same mound,
partially disturbing the earlier grave.
In Chapter 5, we explore the context of time and space, all-important dimensions of
the archaeological record.
 Culture and Context 75

SUMMARY
1. Archaeologists are concerned with the study of ancient cultures and societies.
2. Human culture is unique, its content transmitted from one generation to the next,
allowing societies to develop and continue adapting to aid their survival. Humans
are the only animals to use culture as the primary means of adapting to the
environment.
3. Archaeologists differ considerably in their definitions of culture. Many think of it
as an adaptive system, which reflects the constant adjustments to environmental,
technological, and societal change. Others argue that culture is predominantly idea-
tional, made up of human ideas, interactions, and beliefs.
4. The great diversity of approaches to culture is reflected in constant theoretical
debates which surround the issue of cultural and social change through time.
5. Archaeology has four basic goals: the construction of culture history, the reconstruc-
tion of ancient lifeways, the explanation of cultural and social change, and the con-
servation of the archaeological record.
6. The archaeological record comprises all kinds of archaeological finds, from vast cit-
ies to small scatters of stone artifacts.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Why is stewardship so important in archaeology?
2. What are the five major goals of archaeology, and how do they intersect?
3. What do we mean by “the archaeological record”?

FURTHER READING
Few archaeologists have dared to write a summary of the controversial issues covered in this
chapter. Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips, Method and Theory in American Archaeology
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), is fundamental. So is V. Gordon Childe’s insight-
ful Piecing Together the Past (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956), an older book but right
on the money in many respects. R. L. Lyman and R. C. Dunnell, The Rise and Fall of Culture
History (New York: Plenum, 1997), is a recent assessment of the history of this approach. See
also Bruce D. Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2006).
newgenprepdf

4 Explaining the Past

CHAPT ER OU TL I N E
Interpretation of Culture History 78
Invention 79
Diffusion 82
Migration 83
Noncultural Models 85
Genetics and DNA 86
Ecological/Environmental (Processual) Archaeology 87
Systems and Cultural Ecology 87
Multilinear Cultural Evolution 88
Historical Materialist Approaches 88
Cognitive-Processual Archaeology 90
Archaeological Theory Today and Tomorrow: “Processual Plus” 93
Multidisciplinary Perspectives 94
Alternative Histories 94
DNA Studies 94
Ecology and Evolutionary Theory 95
Understanding the Role of the Human Mind 95
External and Internal Constraints 96
A General Theoretical Framework? 98
 Explaining the Past 77

Bas-relief of the goddess Maat, goddess of rightness. Painted stone relief, Egypt, nineteenth
dynasty.
(CM Dixon / Print Collector / Getty Images)

PREVIEW
Studying culture change, the subject of Chapter 4, is one of the major goals of archae-
ology. All archaeological research begins with culture history, which is concerned
with ancient societies in time and space. We discuss the classic mechanisms of cul-
ture change – inevitable variation, invention, diffusion, and migration, and also non-
cultural models for such change. Culture history is a descriptive process which may
invoke mechanisms of change, but it does not explain why such changes took place.
Two major changes to the study of cultural process dominate archaeology. Ecological
78 Explaining the Past
and environmental approaches, or processual archaeology, are concerned with cultural
and ecological systems and multilinear cultural evolution. Postprocessual archaeology,
a reaction against processual approaches, is profoundly concerned with people as much
as cultural processes. We end with a discussion of current theoretical trends which offer
potential for future study of culture change.
In Chapters 2 and 3, we described some important basic principles of archaeology,
among them human cultural systems and culture change. We also discussed the goals of
archaeology, one of which was explaining cultural and social change. At the same time,
we showed how archaeology developed from an emphasis on changing artifacts, a pre-
occupation with culture history, to a concern with evolutionary development. Today, eco-
logical and evolutionary approaches share the stage with historical materialist approaches
that emphasize the importance of individuals in the past. Before exploring the ways in
which archaeologists collect and analyze data and reconstruct ancient lifeways, we must
look more closely at archaeology’s most important task beyond preserving the past –
explaining why things happened in ancient times, the study of cultural process.
Culture history is the record of the past in time and space, the basis for all study of
culture change in the past.

Interpretation of Culture History

The ordering of archaeological data is a descriptive process. It highlights the pattern-
ing and regularities in archaeological data. The concepts and units of culture historical
studies are devices used to organize data as a preliminary to studying culture change.
These classificatory units, described in Chapter 8, put artifacts and other culture traits
into a time and space context by using such tools as site distribution maps, observa-
tions of layered occupations in ancient settlements, and a variety of dating methods (see
Chapter 5).
Culture history is a sound way of describing the past, but it is of minimal use for
explaining why artifacts, sites, and human societies were similar or different – why
they displayed variability. It’s based on inductive research methods, the development of
generalizations about a research problem that are based on numerous specific observa-
tions, and on a normative view of culture. This assumes that abstract rules govern what
a culture considers normal behavior.
The normative view of culture is a descriptive one, one that can be used to describe
culture during one particular time period or throughout time. Archaeologists base it on
the assumption that surviving artifacts, such as potsherds, display stylistic and other
changes that represent the changing norms of human behavior through time.
The archaeological record does not invariably reflect an orderly and smooth chronicle
of culture change. A radical new artifact inventory may suddenly appear in occupation
levels at several sites while earlier toolkits suddenly vanish. The economy of sites in a
local sequence may change completely within a century as the plow revolutionizes agri-
cultural methods. Such changes are readily observed in thousands of local sequences
all over the world. But how did these changes come about? What processes of cultural
change were at work to cause major and minor alterations in the archaeological record?
A number of descriptive models have been formulated to characterize mechanisms of
culture change – some cultural, others noncultural. Several involve internal change,
others external influence. These descriptive models include inevitable variation and cul-
tural selection, invention, diffusion, and migration.
 Explaining the Past 79
As people learn the behavior patterns of their society, inevitably some differences
in learned behavior appear from generation to generation, which, although minor in
themselves, accumulate over a long time, especially in isolated populations. The snow-
ball effect of inevitable, slow-moving cultural evolution can be detected in dozens of
prehistoric societies. The great variation in Acheulian hand-ax technology throughout
Europe and Africa between 1 million and 150,000 years ago may be in part the result of
these effects.
Change often results from isolation – a very low density of humans per square kilo-
meter. It should not be confused with broad trends in human prehistory that grew over
long periods. For example, the more and more complex burial rituals in the Adena and
Hopewell cultures of the American Midwest between 500 B.C. and A.D. 300 probably
resulted from trends toward greater complexity in religious beliefs and rituals as well as
from political and economic organization over a long time, and not from isolation (see
Discovery box below).
These kinds of changes are quite different from what happens when a society rec-
ognizes that certain culture changes or inventions may be advantageous. Perhaps
many hunter-gatherer societies deliberately took up cultivating the soil once they
saw the advantages it gave neighboring peoples who had already adopted the new
economies.

Invention
Invention is the creation or evolution of a new idea. Many inventions, such as new
social institutions or religious beliefs, leave no trace in the archaeological record. But
some innovations are reflected in new types of surviving artifacts, such as the plow or
the iron ax. If an invention such as plowing is sufficiently useful to be attractive to more
than a few people, the new idea, or a product of the idea, spreads widely and often
rapidly.
By tracing from their place of origin the distribution of such distinctive artifacts as
plowshares, archaeologists have studied ways in which inventions spread. The earli-
est occurrence of ironmaking was in northern Turkey in about 1500 B.C. Iron tools first
appear in the archaeological record of Europe and Egypt much later (see Figure 4.2).
Because the earliest presently known and dated iron artifacts occurred in Turkey, we can
say that ironmaking may have been invented there.

Discovery
Deciphering Hopewell (C. 200 B.C. to A.D. 400)
Hopewell is one of the most fascinating ancient societies in North America. Its complex
and still little-understood spiritual beliefs and burial rites are only now being deciphered
by studies of thousands of artifacts. It offers a cautionary tale against dismissing societies
with relatively simple day-to-day artifacts as being far from sophisticated.
The Hopewell tradition, named after a farm in Ross County, Ohio, flourished from about
200 B.C. to A.D. 400. Hopewell is famous for its earthworks, its flamboyant burial customs,
and its complex exchange networks that traded raw materials and finished artifacts over
enormous areas. Numerous small societies over much of the Midwest shared the com-
plex religious beliefs of this remarkable society. Hopewell people lived for the most part
in small, isolated communities of one or two extended families. They were farmers and
foragers, clustered in local drainage systems close to the ritual precincts that were the
80 Explaining the Past

focus of local life. The Chillicothe region of Ohio was one major center of Hopewell devel-
opment. Another lay in the Illinois and Mississippi river valleys further to the west. Here,
elaborate burial mounds and spectacular geometric earthworks enclose large areas. Within
this region and elsewhere, households formed part of about three local communities com-
prising about a hundred people, well separated across the landscape. Each local group
formed ever-fluid alliances with neighbors, sharing the labor of building earthworks, also
food and other commodities to protect against food shortages, and also providing hus-
bands or wives. This was a world of intimate kin relationships, glued together by complex
social ties and communal rituals conducted at ceremonial enclosures.
Some of the elaborate Hopewell cults commemorated ancestors. Exotic artifacts such
as hammered copper ornaments and stone pipes passed from hand to hand over enor-
mous distances from the Southeast into Southeastern Canada. The same networks han-
dled seashells from the Gulf of Mexico, shiny mica, and obsidian from as far away as what
is now Yellowstone Park in the Rocky Mountains. Enormous resources went into Hopewell
burial rites. Thirty-eight mounds lie within a 110-acre (45-hectacre) rectangular enclosure
at Hopewell itself near Chillicothe. Hopewell mounds average about 30 feet (9 meters) high
and some 100 feet (30 meters) across, each built with the simplest of stone tools, wooden
digging-sticks, and baskets (Figure 4.1).
Generations of archaeologists have tried to decipher the burial rituals and cosmology
of Hopewell groups. More than 1,150 burials are known, of which many are cremations.
Unfortunately, most were excavated in the early days, when scientific methods were rudi-
mentary at best, confronting today’s Hopewell scholars with a daunting jigsaw puzzle of
haphazard field notes and poorly recorded artifacts. We know, however, that Hopewell
mourners used both crypts and charnel houses, the former large boxes sunk into the ground
for the temporary storage of the community dead and their grave goods before they were
interred in a burial mound. Charnel houses were substantial thatched structures where
both cremated individuals and entire corpses lay. Elite individuals lay in log-lined tombs
within the charnel houses accompanied by such items as copper ear spools and breast-
plates, also necklaces of grizzly-bear teeth. Some women wore thousands of freshwater
shell beads. Caches of exotic objects such as silhouettes of bird claws (see Figure 3.2 on
p. 62) and beautiful effigy pipes also lay in the houses. Once no longer needed, the charnel
houses were dismantled or burned down, then covered with a burial mound.
The intermingling of ancestral remains in communal burial places created powerful sym-
bolic ties between dispersed Hopewell groups. Commemorations of these ties may have
unfolded with the passage of the seasons, perhaps with different rituals being performed
at different locations in sequence, depending on the astrological orientation of the earth-
works. Everyone belonged to a clan whose members lived in different communities, an
important integrative mechanism for society as a whole. No one clan provided supreme
leaders or dominated the others. Hopewell was a mosaic of decentralized social units,
which complemented one another and enjoyed approximately the same levels of prestige,
wealth, and access to food. The leaders of society included shamans, men and women
who impersonated animals and were transformed to become them. They were specialists,
some of them healers, others expert in war. When they died, their regalia were buried with
them and others took over their roles.
Hopewell art and burial customs reveal a layered cosmos of underworld and sky defined
by the solstices and the position of moonrise and sunset, and also by the cardinal direc-
tions. The astronomers balanced and combined these different realms, defining their
meanings in art, earthworks, burials, and rituals of all kinds. A symbolic mound, Turtle
Island, was a symbol of the earth disk and the top surface of the underworld. This was
the center of Hopewell existence, a nexus of interaction and cooperation, of similarities
and differences where every individual and every community stood. Hopewell earthworks
rose at points in the landscape where they reiterated the importance of the many layers of
the cosmos, on river terraces close to conical hillocks that defined the heavens. Earthen
enclosures symbolized the center, places where humans could perform ceremonies that
 Explaining the Past 81

Figure 4.1 A  circular Hopewell mound and earthworks at Mound City National Monument,
Ohio. Each mound covers a charnel house where cremated dead were
deposited.
(Caitlin Mirra / Thinkstock by Getty Images)

maintained the delicate balance between the living and the supernatural forces that lay at
the center. Animals played an important part in Hopewell ritual, for people believed that
some humans could transform themselves into animals and vice versa. They were symbols
of clan organization and models of leadership. Personal spiritual power came from trances
induced by hallucinogenic plants or smoking. Darkness, light, animals, changing colors
or reflections, and the mysterious forces of the environment and the supernatural world
were the compelling focuses of Hopewell life and belief, painstakingly reconstructed from
artifacts and other surviving material remains.

In the early days of archaeology, people assumed that metallurgy and other major
inventions were invented in only one place – in many cases southwestern Asia. These
innovations were then assumed to have spread all over the world as other societies
realized how important the new ideas were. But as the importance of environment and
adaptation in the development of human culture has become better understood, this
simple view of invention has been rejected. We now know that agriculture developed
quite independently in Southwest and Southeast Asia, Mesoamerica, and the Andean
area. Complex adaptive processes occurred in all of these areas. Scholars now try to
identify the many interacting factors that caused people to modify their lifestyles to
adopt food production. The genius of humanity was that it recognized opportunities
when they came along and adapted to new circumstances. The issue is not to discover
who first cultivated corn but rather to study the dozens of major and minor alterations
in human culture that were the result of adaptive changes over time.
82 Explaining the Past

Figure 4.2 I ron technology, a revolutionary invention: pharaoh Tutankhamun’s iron-bladed dag-
ger, also a gold dagger, both from his tomb, c. 1323 B.C. Iron objects were of enormous
value in Egypt at the time, as iron metallurgy was a closely guarded secret held by the
Hittites of modern-day Turkey. This particular artifact was probably made of native
hammered iron.
(Robert Harding Picture Library Ltd / Alamy)

Diffusion
The spread of ideas over short or long distances is termed diffusion. Ideas can be trans-
mitted in many ways other than by the movements of entire societies or communi-
ties. Regular trade between neighboring villages or more distant peoples results in the
exchange not only of goods but of ideas as well, especially when much of this trade is
conducted reciprocally. Reciprocity implies a two-sided relationship in which both par-
ties exchange goods, services, and, of course, ideas. Ideas such as a new religious belief
are transmitted from individual to individual and ultimately from group to group. But
neither the exchange of ideas nor that of technological innovations necessarily involves
actual movements of people. Even the spread of material objects and abstract ideas
can have a quite different effect in a new area. For instance, the Hopi Indians of the
Southwest received American trade goods but still retained their own culture, trading
objects but rejecting the ideas of an alien culture.
 Explaining the Past 83

Figure 4.3 The spread of a culture trait in time and space: the cone effect.

Let us say that a new type of painted pot is invented in one village in A . D . 1400.
The advantages of this new vessel are such that villagers 9 miles (14 kilometers) away
learn about it at a celebration a year later. Within ten years, their potters are making
similar receptacles. In a short time the pot form is found commonly in villages 10
miles (16 kilometers) farther away. Half a century later, communities in a 50-mile
(80-kilometer) radius are making the now well-established vessel design. If we put
this stirring tale on paper, we end up with the cone effect shown in Figure 4.3. The
cone effect is the type of distribution we study when identifying diffusion in the arch-
aeological record.
Archaeologically, diffusion is difficult to identify unless one can use very distinctive
artifacts, obviously of common origin, to demonstrate that the artifacts were invented
in only one place, then trace the distribution of the artifact in space and time from its
origin point to neighboring areas. To do so means establishing that the tool was made
first in one place and later in other sites nearby (see Figure 4.3). Instances of diffusion
in prehistory are common. A classic example is the Chavín art style of Peru, which dif-
fused widely over the lowlands from a homeland in the highlands, where it appeared
about 900 B.C. (see Figure 4.4).

Migration
Migration takes place when entire societies deliberately decide to expand their sphere
of influence. English settlers moved to North America, taking their own culture with
them. Spanish conquistadors occupied Mexico. Migration involves not only the move-
ment of ideas but a mass shift of people that results in social and cultural changes on
a large scale. A classic prehistoric migration was that of groups of Polynesians who
deliberately voyaged from the Society Islands to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and New
Zealand, where they settled. In each case, new land masses were found by purposeful
84 Explaining the Past

Figure 4.4 A Chavín shaman transforms himself into a jaguar. From Chavín de Huantar, Peru.
(Bert de Ruiter / Alamy)

exploration, then colonized by small numbers of people who moved to an uninhabited

island.
These types of mass migration were rare in prehistoric times. They would be reflected
in the archaeological record by totally new components and phases or by skeletons of
a totally new physical type. To be proved, the migration would have to show up as
new complexes in the cultural sequence at many neighboring sites. A second type of
migration is on a smaller scale, when a group of foreigners move into another region
and settle there as an organized group. A group of foreigners from the Valley of Oaxaca
did just that at Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico. When René Millon mapped the
whole of this remarkable city, he found a concentration of distinctive Oaxacan artifacts
in one residential area. This Oaxacan colony flourished for centuries in an alien city.
In this and many other cases, the immigrants adopted some features of the host cul-
ture but retained their own cultural identity. So did an enclave of Veracruz merchants
from the lowlands, identified by their distinctive circular huts and painted pottery (see
Figure 4.5).
There are other types of migration, too. Slaves and artisans are often unorganized
migrants, sometimes taking new technological devices with them. Great warrior migra-
tions, like those of Zulu regiments in South Africa in the early nineteenth century, can
cause widespread disruption and population shifts. Such migrations leave few traces in
archaeological sites. Within a few generations, the warriors settle down and adopt the
sedentary life of the conquered. Only a few new weapon forms reveal the presence of
strangers.
 Explaining the Past 85

Figure 4.5 Reconstruction of the Veracruz enclave at Teotihuacán, Mexico.

(Chuck Carter / National Geographic Creative)

It’s important to realize that migrations are not only physical movements over dis-
tance but incidents that involve major, sometimes fundamental, social change.

Noncultural Models
Culture change triggered by alterations in the natural environment is an integral part
of culture history. Earlier noncultural models tended to be simple, stating, for example,
that agriculture began in southwestern Asia when population pressure caused game
and plant food shortages, causing people to turn to farming instead. However, the most
recent research in archaeology has focused heavily on specific details of the relationship
between environment and prehistoric cultures. The complex models that are emerging
from this research show that earlier explanations were far too general to explain these
ever-changing environment–culture relationships.
One needs large quantities of data to identify invention, diffusion, or migration in the
archaeological record. The identification of these classic cultural mechanisms is largely
a mechanical, descriptive activity, because the artifacts used, be they stone axes, pots,
86 Explaining the Past
or swords, are considered in isolation and not as an element of the cultural system of
which they are part. The explanation of culture change requires more sophisticated
research models based on the notion that not only are human cultural systems made up
of many complex interacting elements – religious beliefs, technology, subsistence, and
so on – but these cultural systems also interact with the natural environment and other
complex systems.

Genetics and DNA

An increasingly powerful tool for studying human population movements comes from
molecular biology. All humans carry in their genes the record of their history. Modern
molecular biological techniques have made it possible to detect and analyze new poly-
morphic genes (genes present in slightly different forms in different people) that might
have medical or anthropological interest. Most of our genetic information is in the form
of forty-six chromosomes inside the nuclei of each cell in our bodies. This nuclear DNA
is easy to study in living populations, but degrades quickly and is no longer intact when
a body decomposes. In recent years, studies of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), present
outside the cell nuclei in small structures called mitochondria, have attracted particu-
lar attention. Mitochondrial DNA is useful when studying the past because it has three
distinctive properties. It is preserved in thousands of copies in each cell. Mitochondrial
DNA is inherited through the female line and is passed from mothers to offspring vir-
tually unaltered except for rare changes caused by mutation. It also changes at a steady
rate and in a distinctive way, being transferred from one generation to the next intact,
changing through time only as a result of random mutations. Mitochondrial DNA
changes faster than nuclear DNA, so much so that it has been used as a clock for dating
such major events as the appearance of modern humans. Large-scale studies of human
mtDNA in present-day populations from all parts of the world have shown that there
is relatively little mtDNA variation throughout the globe, suggesting that there was a
relatively recent branching-out of human populations. The African mtDNAs were the
most variable, having had more time to accumulate genetic changes, consistent with the
theory that the African human lineages are the oldest ones.
The first ancient DNA sequences were reported by Swedish scientist Svaante Pääbo,
who extracted and characterized DNA from the skin of a predynastic Egyptian of about
4000 B.C. in 1985. Since then, DNA has been extracted from bones, teeth, and plant
remains using a new technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Pääbo used
this technique on a human brain of 3000 B.C. from a hunter-gatherer site at Windover,
Florida, and identified an mtDNA strain not previously observed in North America.
In recent years, scientists have succeeded in extracting DNA from a Neanderthal bone
over 50,000 years old and have shown that these archaic Europeans were genetically
distinct from the modern humans who succeeded them. Recent research has suggested,
however, that there was some limited interbreeding between modern humans and
Neanderthals in the Near East and perhaps elsewhere, but the evidence is still provi-
sional. Mitochondrial DNA analysis of ancient human skeletons from Rapa Nui (Easter
Island) in the Pacific has also shown that the ultimate origins of the Easter Islanders lie
in Polynesia, for this remote landmass had been colonized from the Society Islands (the
Tahiti region) by A.D. 1200.
As molecular biology assumes even greater sophistication, it will play an import-
ant role in the study of such major issues as the origins of modern humans, the first
Americans, and the first arrival of farming societies in Europe.
 Explaining the Past 87

Ecological/Environmental (Processual) Archaeology

Many archaeologists espouse an ecological and evolutionary approach to explaining the
past. This approach, sometimes called processual archaeology, is based on deductive
research methodology that employs research design, formulation of explicit research
hypotheses, and testing of these against basic data. Its methods are cumulative; that
is, initial hypotheses are designed that propose a working model to explain culture
change. These hypotheses are tested against basic data and some are discarded; others
are refined again and again until the factors that affect cultural change are isolated in
highly specific form.
The processual approach is firmly based on culture history and data obtained from
deductive research. It must be, for the chronological and spatial frameworks for pre-
history come from such investigations. The difference between the processual and
systems-ecological approaches lies in the orientation of the research. Processual archae-
ologists rely on deductive strategies, formulate testable hypotheses, and then gather
data to test them. Very often, however, the initial hypotheses are based on data derived
from inductive culture history.

Systems and Cultural Ecology

Deductive research is extremely valuable for the study of the past, provided that real-
istic account is taken of the uniqueness of archaeological data. In many respects, the
numerous theoretical problems archaeologists are grappling with are the same as those
encountered by biologists working on change in living organisms. It is for this reason
that evolutionary theory is playing an increasingly important part in archaeology.
The most common processual approach deals with the ways in which cultural sys-
tems function, both internally and in relation to external factors such as the natural
environment. The systems-ecological approach involves three basic models of cultural
change: systems models, which are based on general systems theory; cultural ecology,
which provides complicated models of the interaction between human cultures and their
environment; and multilinear evolution, which is a theory of the cumulative evolution
of culture over long periods through complex adaptations to the environment. It is, as
archaeologist Kent Flannery (1976: 16) once put it, “the search for the ways human popu-
lations (in their own way) do the things that other systems do.” General systems theory
came to archaeology from other sciences and has caused archaeologists to think of human
cultures as open systems, regulated in part by external stimuli. This general concept is
most applicable to human cultures that interact intimately with the natural environment.
Systems theory is little more than a general concept in archaeology, with the advantage
that it frees us from having to look at only one agent of culture change, such as migration
or diffusion. It allows us to focus instead on relationships between different components
of a cultural system and between a cultural system and its environment.
Cultural ecology is a means of studying human culture that gives us a picture of the
way in which human populations adapt to and transform their environments. Human
cultural systems have to adapt to other cultures and to the natural environment. Indeed,
so many factors influence cultural systems that the processes by which cultural similar-
ities and differences are generated are not easy to understand. Cultural ecologists see
human cultures as subsystems interacting with other major subsystems, among them
the biotic community and the physical environment. Thus the key to understanding cul-
tural process lies in the interactions among these various subsystems.
88 Explaining the Past
Effective subsistence strategies and technological artifices are the cornerstones of any
society’s successful adaptation to its environment. But social organization and religious
beliefs are important in ensuring cooperative exploitation of the environment as well
as technological cooperation. For instance, religious life provided an integrating force
in many societies, not least among them the Maya of Mesoamerica and the Sumerians
of Mesopotamia. There are obvious difficulties in studying the interactions between
people and their environment, especially when preservation conditions limit the arti-
facts and other data available for study. Fortunately, however, artifacts and other elem-
ents of the technological subsystem often survive. Because technology is a primary way
in which different cultures adapt to their environment, detailed models of technological
subsystems allow archaeologists to obtain a relatively comprehensive picture of the cul-
tural system as a whole.

Multilinear Cultural Evolution

Multilinear cultural evolution is a branching, cumulative process that results from
cultural adaptations over long periods. Multilinear evolution recognizes that there are
many evolutionary tracks, the differences resulting from individual adaptive solutions.
Thus cultural adaptations are complex processes that are fine-tuned to local conditions,
with long-term cumulative effects. These adaptations can be studied on a large and
small scale by a systems-ecological approach. Multilinear cultural evolution, then, is the
vital integrative force that brings systems theory and cultural ecology together into a
closely knit, highly flexible way of studying and explaining cultural process.
The systems-ecological approach produces very complex interpretations of major
developments in prehistory – for example, the origins of literate civilization in south-
western Asia. Early theories invoked single causes, such as population pressure, the
invention of irrigation agriculture, even warfare or trade, as the ultimate single causes –
prime movers, if you will – of civilization. Systems-ecological models argue that a whole
series of important variables with complex interrelationships and variations caused the
emergence of civilization. Under this rubric, the rise of civilization should be thought
of as a series of interacting and cumulative processes that were triggered by favorable
cultural and ecological conditions, which continued to develop cumulatively as a result
of continuous positive feedback.
For example, farming communities were established in the low-lying Mesopotamian
delta between the Tigris and Euphrates by at least 6000 B.C. These settlements triggered
three processes that set up critical feedback relationships: slow but steady population
growth within the delta, increased specialization in food production by different groups
within society, and a demand for and acquisition of raw materials from outside the delta
region. Each of these processes set off feedback reactions that became more and more
complex as time went on. A need for more fields to feed more people, more central-
ized planning and administration, larger and more densely populated settlements that
took up a minimum of agricultural land, irrigation farming, and finally an adminis-
trative elite that controlled people’s access to resources – all were complex reactions to
long-term processes of cultural change.

Historical Materialist Approaches

Archaeology is based on the optimistic belief that knowledge about human societies
has accumulated gradually, through rational inquiry modeled on the hard sciences and
 Explaining the Past 89
mathematics. This notion of cumulative science and knowledge is vital to understand-
ing the convoluted history of archaeological theory since the 1960s.
In the 1960s and 1970s, archaeologists were talking about a so-called “new” archae-
ology, a revolutionary approach to the past that promised to overcome the many limita-
tions of the archaeological record. In fact, this “new” archaeology, processual archaeology,
failed to deliver on many of its promises. Processual archaeology has emphasized sub-
sistence and settlement patterns, animal bones, plant remains, and ancient population
distributions, topics covered extensively in this book. Its many practitioners embraced
methodological rigor and interpreted the past in terms of cultural systems, with a strong
emphasis on material objects. Many of its once new tenets are part of today’s main-
stream archaeology.
Back in the 1960s, Lewis Binford and others believed that processual archaeology
would allow researchers to investigate all aspects of human experience, including intan-
gibles such as beliefs. But, eventually, many discouraged processual archaeologists
dismissed religion, ideology, and human ideas as marginal to the central enterprise of
studying subsistence and settlement.
Inevitably, there was a reaction against the processual approach, which seemed to
dehumanize the past in a quest for processes of cultural change. During the late 1970s
and 1980s, more researchers began thinking about the entire spectrum of human
behavior – the development and expression of human consciousness, religion and
belief, symbolism and iconography – as part of a more holistic archaeology. Thus
was born what is sometimes called postprocessual archaeology, a sometimes vio-
lent antidote to its predecessor – in general terms a reaction against the relatively
anonymous processual approach that emphasized cultural processes over people
and individuals.
Postprocessual archaeology is a loosely defined term that covers several often
aggressively expressed intellectual developments that frequently parallel schools of
thought in literature and anthropology. The term is used more extensively in Europe
than in North America, although the same theoretical concerns arise on both sides of
the Atlantic. It is a convenient term that embraces an enormous range of different,
and often transitory, theoretical approaches as eclectic as those who propose them.
These approaches coincide, in general, with what one can call historical materialist
approaches to the past and cover much contemporary research into the past, includ-
ing research on ethnic minorities, gender, and women. Whereas ecological/evolu-
tionary theorists regard human societies as integrated, holistic systems, the historical
materialists view them as eclectic amalgams of competing individuals, factions, and
social groups. In other words, people lie at the core of cultural and social change in the
past. Individuals, households, kin groups, and other entities are agencies for change.
Agency in archaeology is the notion that the past was inhabited by people rather than
anonymous “cultures.”
The historical materialist (or postprocessual) approach covers a formidable morass of
ever-changing theory. As British archaeologist John Bintcliff has pointed out, archaeo-
logical theory has unfolded not in a cumulative manner but by a process of almost total
renewal every ten years or so. In each case, the leading proponents of the new approach
write off the previous paradigm as useless and introduce new concepts, often derived
from attractive theoretical approaches developed in other disciplines and not in archae-
ology itself.
Postprocessualism introduced a long period of theoretical instability in the 1970s and
1980s, which saw some archaeologists, notably British scholar Ian Hodder, turning to
spatial analysis, then structuralism and postmodernism. Almost without exception, the
90 Explaining the Past
new approaches arrived within archaeology via what Bintcliff (1991: 277) called “a novel
bibliography of intellectual traditions [from other academic disciplines] likely to be eso-
teric and unpalatable to their predecessors – who ‘write themselves out’ of the debate by
failing to read the new sacred texts.” Very often, their original authors in, say, sociology,
had never thought about archaeology in their lives! With such constant renewal going
on, there was often very little debate or even dialogue between people who adhered to
or had developed new theoretical approaches. Very often, their predecessors were too
busy testing their own laboriously developed approaches in the field.
It’s easy to be cynical about the cross-currents of archaeological theory, but good
theory is always like that – ever-changing, brimming with original (and not-so-
original) ideas, and in a constant state of flux. Archaeology, like other sciences, would
soon shrivel into insignificance without constant theoretical debates. The best the-
orists are bold, controversial, and not afraid to go out on a limb. We cannot have
enough of them!
For all of their constantly shifting paradigms, historical materialist (postprocessual)
approaches have made three positive and important contributions.
First, meaning is more important than materialism. No longer can we interpret the
past in terms of purely ecological, technological, and other material considerations.
Culture is interactive. In other words, people are actors who create, use, and manipulate
their symbolic capabilities to make and remake the world they live in.
Second, archaeologists must critically examine their social responsibilities, looking
beyond their specialties to the broader aims of the discipline and to issues of moral and
emotional involvement with the past in contemporary society. How does the public
interact with the past?
Third, many perspectives on ancient society have been neglected, among them those
of women, ethnic minorities, and what are often called “the people without history” –
anonymous, often illiterate commoners.
Considerable debate surrounds the third of these issues, for some archaeologists
believe that their interpretations of the past are Eurocentric and culturally biased, mak-
ing them unacceptable to those whose history they claim to study. In other words, they
are imposing their culture and view of the past on others such as Australian Aborigines
and Native Americans, who may have entirely different perspectives. The controversy
is still unresolved, but there is no question that in the future archaeologists will have to
work more closely with those they study, or they are in real danger of becoming margin-
alized as a source of history. One helpful approach considers the archaeologist as a form
of “active mediator” between the present and the past. The debate continues.

Cognitive-Processual Archaeology
Many archaeologists still firmly believe in the ecological/evolutionary approach, espe-
cially in North America. But even the most diehard processualists are now paying closer
attention to the role of people in the past. People are like actors, interacting with their
culture – this concept is the major difference in approach between archaeologists using
an ecological/evolutionary approach to the past and those who are concerned with
symbolic meaning, structure, and the rules that once governed society. After intensive
debate, the beginning of a theoretical consensus is emerging, under the broad label of
cognitive-processual archaeology. This label covers numerous approaches to cultural
and social change which are as eclectic as their users. The important point is that the
latest approaches combine science and more intuitive ideas.
 Explaining the Past 91
The Oxford English Dictionary, the ultimate arbiter of the English language, even for
Americans, defines cognition as “the action or faculty of knowing taken in its widest sense,
including sensation, perception, conception, etc.” From an archaeological perspective,
the term cognitive archaeology covers the whole spectrum of human behavior, espe-
cially religion and belief, and also the development and expression of human conscious-
ness. Since the very early days of archaeology, researchers have been concerned with
ancient religion, belief, and expression, the subject matter of cognitive archaeology –
what has sometimes been called the “archaeology of mind.” How can one define cog-
nitive archaeology? Is it possible to study human cognition from the material remains
of the archaeological record, even granting that we cannot afford to ignore it? Some of
the best minds in archaeology are debating these questions and attempting to create
a cognitive-processual approach that creates a new framework for archaeology, draw-
ing on both old and new models and methods. This is an important exercise because
the archaeology of today is built on solid scientific foundations, not on hermeneutics,
interpretive approaches that allow insight to play a key role. That is the approach used
by those who believe there are ancient civilizations lying under Antarctic ice or that
astronauts from outer space founded Maya civilization. Thus cognitive-processualists
never claim they can establish what people thought, but they can give insights into how
they thought.
Cognitive archaeology covers all of the human past, but it can be divided into two
broad areas of concern. One involves the study of the cognitive facilities of early homi-
nins and archaic humans, the relationships between toolmaking and cognitive abilities,
the origins of language, and the social contexts of early human behavior. The other
covers the past 40,000 years – the cognitive aspects of such major developments as the
origins of food production and civilization. British archaeologist Colin Renfrew consid-
ers the challenge for cognitive archaeology to be establishing how the formation of sym-
bolic systems in, say, the Near East or early Mesoamerica molded and conditioned later
cultural developments – for example, in Maya civilization. He considers that humans
use symbols in about six ways: for design, for planning, for measurement, for social
relations (using symbols to structure and regulate interpersonal behavior), for represen-
tation, and for mediating between the human and supernatural worlds. He also believes
the reason that cognitive archaeology has been neglected is that it lacks a coherent meth-
odology. This methodology may emerge from the convergence of such diverse fields as
cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, computer simulation, and cognitive archae-
ology itself. But this convergence, and the potential intellectual leap forward that might
result, will not occur until archaeologists interested in human cognition develop a rigor-
ous and explicit methodology that will substitute for many of the simplistic generaliza-
tions that masquerade under the label of postprocessual archaeology.
Archaeologists Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus have long been interested in cog-
nition. Their earliest work was an attempt to understand ancient Zapotec subsist-
ence behavior in Mexico’s Valley of Oaxaca by taking into account what early Spanish
accounts told of local Indian cosmology. They believe this kind of approach, which makes
use of critically analyzed historical documents and other sources, to be productive, as
opposed to the inspired speculation so common in the 1980s. Flannery and Marcus con-
sider cognitive archaeology to be the study of all those aspects of ancient culture that
are the product of the ancient mind. This includes cosmology, religion, ideology, iconog-
raphy, and all forms of human intellectual and symbolic behavior. They also firmly state
that effective cognitive archaeology depends on rigorous research methods. Thus it can
only be used when the body of supporting data is rich. Otherwise, it becomes “little
more than speculation, a kind of bungee jump into the Land of Fantasy” (1993: 264). In
92 Explaining the Past
practical terms, and for obvious reasons, cognitive archaeology is usually most effective
when historical records are available to amplify the archaeological record, as they are
when working with archaeological evidence and Maya inscriptions.
Under this approach, cognitive archaeology has considerable limitations. All cul-
tures have a theory of the universe in which they live. Their cosmology, like that of
Western civilization based on modern astronomy, constitutes a theory of the origin
of the universe, defines space and time, and can provide a structure for religion and
ideology. Many cultures, among them the ancient Greek and Maya, envisage a cosmos
inhabited by supernatural beings, another link to religious beliefs. Although cosmol-
ogy can have a strong influence on both settlement and subsistence – as, for example,
in cases where certain aspects of the environment such as pristine forest may be held
sacred – it is difficult, if not impossible, to reconstruct cosmology from animal and
plant remains alone.
Religious beliefs provide ethics and values, often within the framework of a quest
for the values of an ideal life. A well-defined worldview links cosmology and religion,
the latter providing the rituals and practices that help the worshiper attain the ideal.
Clearly, these ethics and values can have a powerful effect on human behavior, even
on such pragmatic areas of life as obtaining food and trading. Religion can provide a
powerful catalyst for social and political change, as was the case, for example, when
Buddhist merchants brought their religion to Southeast Asia and changed the course
of history by providing the spiritual inspiration for a series of brilliant kingdoms, like
those of the Khmer of Cambodia (see Figure 4.6).
Flannery and Marcus believe that one approach to reconstructing ancient religions
is to construct models from ethnohistoric sources, then to isolate temples, artifacts, art
styles, and other cultural elements that can be identified archaeologically. These are
studied in their cultural context, and the observed archaeological remains compared
with the model from ethnohistoric documents. Ideology is a product of society and pol-
itics, “a body of doctrine, myth, and symbolism associated with a social movement, an
institution, class, or group of individuals, often with reference to some political or cul-
tural plan, along with the strategies for putting the doctrine into operation” (Flannery
and Marcus, 1993: 266). For example, any archaeologist concerned with the appearance
of ranked, as opposed to egalitarian, societies is studying fundamental changes in ideol-
ogy simply because egalitarian societies tend to have leveling mechanisms that prevent
one individual or group from attaining superior rank. Again, these changes can only be
documented by a judicious use of historical analogies and artifacts.
For instance, in the Valley of Oaxaca, many village farming communities functioned
without any apparent ranking between 1400 and 1150 B.C. Between 1150 and 850 B.C.
the first artistic depictions of supernatural lineages of ancestors appear. Some may
represent the earth, others the sky, in the form of lightning or a fire serpent. Some form
of hereditary social ranking seems to accompany the new art. Then the Zapotec state
came into being, with a powerful elite ruling from Monte Albán – a tiny minority asso-
ciated with depictions of sky and lightning, while earth and earthquake symbols faded
into obscurity. It is as if those who rose to prominence were associated with lightning’s
descendants, in an ideological shift where hereditary social inequality is condoned for
the first time.
Cognitive-processual researches are highly effective if they use established analyt-
ical techniques and draw on information from many sources. Cognitive archaeology
reaches a high degree of refinement when aided by documents, as is the case with the
 Explaining the Past 93

Figure 4.6 A
 ngkor Wat, Cambodia, a Khmer representation of the Hindu universe with its sacred
mountain peaks, A.D. 1117.
(Olga Anourina / Thinkstock by Getty Images)

Aztec civilization of Mexico or the Inka of the Andes. But earlier societies, such as, for
instance, the first farming societies of the Near East with their mysterious female figures
and plastered human skulls, offer much greater challenges. It is all too easy to call each
female figure a “fertility figurine” and to talk of ancient mother goddesses when there
is, in fact, no scientific basis for such conclusions.
Cognitive archaeology is no shortcut, but an approach to ancient beliefs, cosmology,
religion, and other intangibles based on rigorous analysis and data from many sources.
All of the historical materialist approaches to the past are reactions to the feeling that
modern archaeology has become too dehumanized, too divorced from its proper role in
modern society. In a sense, this is a process of archaeologists becoming more critical of
their own place in the unfolding intellectual development of Western scholarship.

Archaeological Theory Today and Tomorrow:

“Processual Plus”
Most of today’s archaeologists would agree that theory does not comprise a rigid
framework into which they must squeeze their work at all costs – as has sometimes
happened in the past. As Michelle Hegmon has pointed out, “Theory is, or should be,
a set of general guiding principles that help us – as researchers and as curious human
94 Explaining the Past
beings – make sense of specific cases and of the world around us” (Hegmon, 2003: 213).
Theory is a tool to identify, label, and explain the past. As Hegmon points out, most
American archaeologists (and, indeed, researchers elsewhere in the world) tend to
combine a broad array of theoretical approaches into what she calls “processual-plus.”
Evolutionary theory in various forms is much used; so are many new approaches for
conceptualizing society and the notion of individuals as agents of change. The past
has been “engendered” – a perspective that developed in parallel with postprocessual
archaeology with a strong base in feminist theory. Studying what men and women did
in the past, and the implications of this activity for gender relations, is now a part of
mainstream archaeology.
The theoretical approaches known as processual and postprocessual archaeology are
now pushing against one another to produce research that invokes a number of ave-
nues, everything from Marxist perspectives to attempts at historical narratives of house-
holds and communities. Today, most archaeologists are more interested in exploring the
archaeological record and its implications than in theory alone. Nevertheless, there are
many theoretical disagreements, which keep archaeology dynamic and exciting. Much
of this dynamism comes from a focus on major issues like gender and agency that cut
across all kinds of theoretical approaches.
Our interpretations of the past are likely to become more sophisticated in the future
as archaeological theory matures. New actors are coming on stage as well, among them
the increasingly urgent need to focus on conservation and management of the archaeo-
logical record and the increased influence of CRM as a primary source of archaeological
research. At present, archaeology draws on theoretical approaches from many academic
disciplines, and there is little agreement as to a dominant approach. This makes it dou-
bly hard to discern what lies ahead.
We believe that major advances in archaeological theory will come from several
already identifiable trends.

Multidisciplinary Perspectives
Archaeology is becoming ever more multidisciplinary in its perspective and in its
research. More and more, a researcher working on, say, an early agricultural settle-
ment draws on a diverse range of tools, not just the methods of archaeology unaided.
Genetics alone is changing the face of human prehistory. We think that future archaeo-
logical theory will be driven by this broad, multidisciplinary perspective. The result: an
increasingly eclectic body of archaeological theory.

Alternative Histories
As part of this multidisciplinary endeavor, a new generation of archaeological
theory will take increasing account of ethnohistorical researches and traditional
oral histories to offer new perspectives on the past. In the American Southwest,
for example, Native American Indian groups such as the Hopi, Navajo, and Zuñi
have formed their own archaeological units and conduct important CRM research.
But the dialogue between archaeologists and indigenous peoples everywhere has
hardly begun.

DNA Studies
A great deal will be learned from DNA studies of ancient human bones and from DNA
preserved in other specimens such as coprolites. The study of mtDNA has thrown
 Explaining the Past 95
important light on the origins of modern humans in tropical Africa and on their spread
from their original homeland.

Ecology and Evolutionary Theory

Both ecology and evolutionary theory will be important in the study of cultural change
and the birth of complex societies. The most useful evolutionary perspective in archae-
ology, concerned as it is with change through time, is one that focuses on individuals
as dynamic persons, constantly adjusting their behavior as their social and physical
environments alter. These same individuals are people capable of creative thinking, a
uniquely human characteristic.
Thought is a driving force in cultural change, in decision making and learning, and in
the process of adaptation. There are, of course, limits on human knowledge – problems
we cannot cope with, processes of comprehension that are beyond us, mistakes we can
make through mental confusion. These limits place a premium on cooperation between
individuals in the solving of problems, such as finding a way to kill large numbers of
bison at one time.
This form of evolutionary archaeology will involve developing new methodolo-
gies that integrate evolutionary ecology and human psychology and ways of relating
short-term individual behavior to the inevitably generalized data from the archaeo-
logical record. Many new and sometimes arcane approaches will characterize the next
generation of evolutionary archaeology, including everything from computer simu-
lations to cost–benefit analysis. In many ways, the biologist and the archaeologist
are facing the same problem: How do forms, whether living or cultural, emerge and
stabilize?

Understanding the Role of the Human Mind

The ecological/evolutionary approach may give us a better understanding of what
archaeologists know, but this is useless without a better comprehension of what human
behavior produced the archaeological record. Today, many archaeologists believe
that human behavior is less orderly than many cultural evolutionists would like us
to believe, yet not entirely random, as some historical materialist scholars assume.
There are sufficient regularities in cultural developments in different regions – such
as, for example, in the development of agriculture and village life in the Near East
and Mesoamerica – to suggest that recurrent operations of cause and effect do result
in the evolution of similar forms of behavior in widely separated areas. There is much
we do not know about the nature of cultural and social systems. Does a change in one
subsystem affect all others, as many archaeologists assume? It is by no means certain
that this is the case.
Humans never adjust to the physical world as it really is but to this same world
as they perceive it through their own cultural conditioning. Thus the human abil-
ity to reason and adjust cultural perceptions plays an essential role in the ways in
which people interact with one another and with the environment. In other words,
the human mind plays an important role in all aspects of human behavior. As the
Canadian archaeologist Bruce Trigger wrote (1991: 567), we should view human
behavior as “the product of interaction between the ability of individual human
beings to foresee at least some of the consequences of what they do and the sorts of
constraints on human behavior, both physical and imagined, that such calculations
must take into account.”
96 Explaining the Past

External and Internal Constraints

These constraints can be external. Processual archaeologists have made important stud-
ies of the ecological, technological, and economic constraints that act on human soci-
eties: Witness important research into changes in settlement patterns in the Basin of
Mexico and on the rise of Mesopotamian civilization. But many noneconomic and non-
ecological factors also influence human behavior. So do actual physical limitations of
the human body and the nature of our brains. So instead of saying that the environment
is responsible for cultural change, one can argue that it constrains human behavior.
Finally, general systems research has shown convincingly that there are only a limited
number of alternative ways to process information and make decisions. This limits the
number of social and political organizations that are viable for human societies. For
instance, decision making by consensus, so typical of small-scale societies, only works
well in groups of 300 people or fewer. Some form of coercion is essential when more
than 1,500 people live in the same group.
In general terms, the larger the scale of the society, the more complex and bureau­
cratized the institutions that regulate it. There are only a limited number of viable social
and political structures that human societies can adopt, which accounts for the striking
similarities in general organization between, say, Sumerian and Maya civilization in dif-
ferent corners of the world.
Internal constraints also operate on our behavior. These include knowledge,
beliefs, values, and other culturally conditioned habits, all of them different in each
culture. Yet some of them are shared by cultures flourishing thousands of miles apart.
For instance, two widely separated cultures may develop bronze metallurgy, which is
based on a common body of technological know-how; but the cultural context of that
knowledge is radically different, as it was, say, in the Shang civilization of China and
the Moche culture in coastal Peru (see Figure 4.7). Some symbols, like the common
practice of elevating chiefs or kings on a dais, or associations between rulers and the
sun, have developed in many places. That does not mean they are connected, as early
diffusionists would have argued, but simply reflect more or less uniform operations
of the human mind.
According to this perspective, human cultures are historical phenomena shaped by
both external and internal constraints. Our ability to use our imaginations to make cal-
culated decisions plays a significant part in streamlining any form of innovation. Our
culture has a store of ideas and social values that channel and restrict innovation. In
other words, information transmitted from one generation to the next provides most of
the knowledge that an individual needs to deal with ecological and social realities. Each
generation reworks this information and its accompanying cultural constraints to reflect
the realities of its own circumstances, a process that transformed human societies and at
times led to new social institutions.
Cultural traditions provide guidance for coping with the environment – a force
that can operate against innovation – and a body of intellectual information that
changes constantly from one generation to the next. They are as important as eco-
logical factors in influencing human behavior. The individual is the one who has
perception, who takes steps to make changes. So external and internal constraints
on human behavior are equally important and complement each other throughout
human history. Ecological and other external factors can be culturally mediated,
but they operate independently of human actions, which makes them susceptible
to understanding in terms of evolutionary theory and other such generalizations.
Cultural traditions, the internal constraints, are far more idiosyncratic, far more
 Explaining the Past 97

Figure 4.7 M
 oche gold ear ornament in hammered gold from the tomb of a lord of Sipán. The
warrior wears a turquoise tunic and holds a detachable war club. He wears an earplug,
minute bells on his belt, and carries a removable circular shield. Every part of this intri-
cate ornament had intense symbolic meaning in Moche society.
(Frans Lemmens / Alamy)

haphazard. This makes it difficult to impose evolutionary order on human his-

tory because, despite external constraints, much cultural change is contingent on
ever-changing circumstances and cultural traditions. Human culture’s open-ended
capacity for further elaboration creates a need for order to make its diversity under-
standable. By studying individual cultural traditions, archaeologists can explain the
distinctive features of cultures in ways that evolutionists and cultural ecologists can
never hope to.
We believe that archaeologists will have to explain the past in terms of constraints.
There are those of a natural order, such as environment, technology, and limitations
placed on social organization by the cultural system. Such general factors can best be
explained through applications of middle-range theory and ethnoarchaeological data
(see Chapter 9). This research will be combined with inquiries into cultural meanings,
using refinements of the direct historical method that employ documents, archaeology,
linguistics, and oral traditions to provide cultural meaning for the generalizations of
middle-range theory.
Archaeological understandings of all the constraints that have shaped ancient soci-
eties will vary considerably from one culture to another. Although the direct histor-
ical method can take us back many millennia, there are many societies – for example,
those of the European Cro-Magnons of 20,000 years ago – that will always be known
to us mainly from the perspective of external constraints. This does not mean, of
98 Explaining the Past
course, that archaeologists despair of ever understanding the behavior of very early
human societies. It means simply that they have a lively perception of the limitations
of archaeological data. At the same time, they are striving to make archaeology more
human-centered than the kind of impersonal science that characterized much of ear­
lier processual work.

A General Theoretical Framework?

Some theoreticians will continue their attempts to construct a general theoretical frame-
work for archaeology, an elusive and frustrating task. Any general framework will have
to pay careful attention to ecological and cultural approaches to the past and also to
advances in biological anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience. Those who develop
it will wrestle with complex problems. For example, under what circumstances is learned
behavior more powerful than individual innovation in determining whether innova-
tions become established in society? Under what circumstances does natural selection
favor certain behavioral characteristics or types of society over others? What kinds of
ancient human behavior result from thought patterns that are part of being human?
How profoundly can cultural and social factors influence them? Much of this research
will depend on very detailed studies of single ancient societies or cultural traditions as
a basis for generalizing about others. As a dispassionate observer of archaeological the-
ory, the late Canadian archaeologist Bruce Trigger noted that the best way to develop a
general theoretical framework will be on the basis of long-term, intensive research into
ancient peoples, cultures, and regions, a major task for future generations.
This is an exciting time to become an archaeologist. A new generation of highly
sophisticated methods and multidisciplinary research is rapidly changing the ways
in which archaeologists explain the past. There will never be consensus about arch-
aeological theory, but it offers remarkable opportunities for fresh insights into ancient
times. As archaeologist Ian Hodder once remarked, we need to engage with the past
from many perspectives and interests. All of us are stakeholders in the past; the future
of archaeology lies in understanding a past with many voices and being closely engaged
in the issues of the contemporary world, such as climate change, ethnic diversity, and
self-sustainability.

SUMMARY
1. Chapter 4 is concerned with the explanation of culture change. Culture history is
descriptive archaeology, based on inductive research methods, or the development
of generalizations based on numerous specific observations, and on a normative
view of culture.
2. Culture historians use four descriptive models to characterize culture change: inev-
itable variation, invention, diffusion, and migration.
3. The processual approach to culture change uses deductive research and is most
commonly concerned with the ways in which cultural systems function. This
systems-ecological approach uses systems models, cultural ecology, and multilinear
evolution to produce complex interpretations of such developments as the origins
of agriculture.
4. Many archaeologists have reacted against the materialist processual approach
and have focused on the entire spectrum of human behavior. Such reactions form
the complex field of historical materialist (postprocessual) archaeology, which
 Explaining the Past 99
emphasizes the importance of individuals and groups in cultural change, includ-
ing women and minorities, and also the role of the modern-day archaeologist as an
interpreter of the past.
5. In recent years, a synthesis between processual and what is sometimes called cogni-
tive archaeology has begun to develop, which combines scientific approaches with
studies of human consciousness, religion, and belief.
6. The debate over a new, more human-centered archaeology is in its infancy. Most
archaeologists in North America and elsewhere use a combination of theoretical
approaches to explore the archaeological record.
7. New generations of multidisciplinary research, evolutionary inquiry, and studies of
the constraints of human behavior will revolutionize archaeological theory in the
future. Developing a general theoretical framework for archaeology will involve
drawing on many other disciplines, among them biological anthropology and
psychology.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What are the differences between diffusion and migration? Think of examples
of each.
2. What can genetics contribute to the study of the past?
3. How does processual archaeology differ from postprocessual approaches?

FURTHER READING

The literature is enormous. Matthew Johnson, Archaeological Theory: An Introduction, 2nd edn.
(New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), is a good starting point. Bruce D. Trigger, A History of
Archaeological Thought, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), and
Lewis Binford’s In Pursuit of the Past, rev. edn. (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2002), are invaluable. Postprocessual archaeology has generated a profuse literature. A series
of essays on cognitive-processual archaeology appears in Colin Renfrew and others, “What
Is Cognitive Archaeology?” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 3(2) (1993): 247–270. A useful
introduction to general anthropological theory is Robert Layton, An Introduction to Theory in
Anthropology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997). For a contemporary view,
see Ian Hodder, The Archaeological Process: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999). An excel-
lent anthology of writings about archaeological theory over the past twenty years is Robert
Preucel and Ian Hodder, eds., Contemporary Archaeology in Theory: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell,
1996). For a dispassionate analysis of current theoretical approaches, see Michele Hegmon,
“Setting Theoretical Egos Aside: Issues and Theory in North American Archaeology,” American
Antiquity 68(2) (2003): 213–243.
newgenprepdf

5 Space and Time

CHAPT ER OU TL I N E
Space 102
The Law of Association 103
Assemblages and Subassemblages 103
Time 105
Linear and Cyclical Time 107
Relative Chronology 108
The Law of Superposition 108
Artifacts and Relative Chronology 110
Cross-Dating 111
Obsidian Hydration 112
Absolute Chronology 112
Historical Records and Objects of Known Age 113
Tree-Ring Dating (Dendrochronology) 114
Chronometric Chronology 117
Radiocarbon Dating 117
Luminescence Dating 121
Electronic Spin Resonance 122
Uranium Series Dating 122
Potassium-Argon Dating 122
Fission Track Dating 123
 Space and Time 101

Two children boxing depicted on a frieze at the Minoan village, Akrotiri, Santorini Island, Greece,
c. 1600 B.C.
(Robert Harding Picture Library Ltd / Alamy)

PREVIEW
Chapter 5 discusses time and space, the two ingredients of archaeological context. Space
in archaeology is closely tied to patterns of human behavior and associations of arti-
facts, food remains, and other structures with one another in the ground. We discuss the
all-important Law of Association, which governs artifact patternings, also the Law of
Superposition, which governs relative chronology, the establishment of chronological
relationships between different occupation layers in archaeological sites. We also dis-
cuss absolute chronology, dating in calendar years, and some of the chronological meth-
ods that are used to do this. These include tree-ring chronology, radiocarbon dating, and
potassium-argon methods.
An Egyptian pharaoh lying in his tomb surrounded by all his riches; a house
destroyed during an earthquake, the inhabitants buried inside; a mass bison kill on
the North American Plains – all are moments from the past frozen in time and space.
102 Space and Time
Having traveled briefly through the world of archaeological theory, we must now focus
on the basic principles of archaeology. Chapter 5 examines the critical elements of space
and time, the basis of archaeological context.

Space
Space – not the limitless space of the heavens, but a precisely defined location for every
find made during an archaeological survey and excavation – is a vital dimension of
archaeological context.
Every archaeological find has an exact location in latitude, longitude, and depth
measurement, which together identify any point in space absolutely and uniquely. (The
universal transverse Mercator international grid system is often used as an alterna-
tive.) The telltale debris from stone toolmaking, heavy butchery tools and broken ani-
mal bones from a Plains bison kill site, carbonized loaves and clay ovens at an ancient
Egyptian bakery – all tell stories of long-forgotten human behavior in villages, houses,
and workshops. All depend on the dimension of space. Spatial location is indispensable
to archaeologists because it enables them to establish the distances between objects or
dwellings, or between entire settlements, or between settlements and key vegetational
zones and landmarks. Such distances may be a few inches of level ground between a
fine clay pot and the skeleton of its dead owner, or 10 miles (16 kilometers) separat-
ing two seasonal camps. A team of fieldworkers may record the distance between doz-
ens of villages that traded luxury goods such as seashells over hundreds of miles. For
example, the research teams that studied the hinterland of the great Maya city of Copán
in Honduras located more than 2,500 outlying towns, villages, and small hamlets. They
used this spatial data to document the buildup and collapse of rural populations around
the city between A.D. 400 and 1200.
When carrying out surface surveys or excavations, archaeologists use special meth-
ods to record the precise positions of artifacts, dwellings, and other finds. They tie in the
position of each site to accurate survey maps so they can use the grid coordinates on the
map to define the location precisely on the landscape. By using geographic positioning
systems (GPS) (see Chapter 6), they can combine their spatial data with environmental,
topographic, and vegetational information in digitized databases, then examine chan-
ging settlement distributions over time. The same precision operates at the site level.
When investigating an individual site, excavators lay out recording grids made up of
equal squares over the entire site, using the grids, or, more commonly, electronic meas-
uring devices, to record the position of each artifact, each feature (see Figure 7.10 on
p. 171 for a site grid).
Spatial analysis is the analysis of spatial relationships both within sites and over
much larger areas.
Space involves archaeologists in three directions of inquiry:

• The process of describing one’s finds, of determining the cultural origins of arti-
facts. This procedure of ordering is described more fully in Chapter 8, where we
discuss some of the arbitrary analytical devices that archaeologists use.
• Studying specific activities – economic, religious, social, technological – within a
human settlement. These patternings may reflect the activities of a person, a house-
hold, or an entire community.
• The study of settlement patterns, the changing distributions of human settlement
over ancient landscapes (see Chapter 12).
 Space and Time 103

The Law of Association

Context in space is based on associations between artifacts and other evidence of human
behavior around them. Let us say you find a beer can opener in a plowed field. An expert
on such artifacts – and they can be found – usually can date your opener to within a few
years of its manufacture by going to manufacturers’ files or U.S. Patent Office records.
But your beer can opener was an isolated find. No other signs of human activity were
discovered nearby. You would have difficulty, if you were not a twenty-first-century
American, making the inference that the artifact was used for opening a can. But had
you found the can opener in association with a dozen punctured beer cans of similar
age, you could then infer the general activity that took place, and you could draw some
conclusions about the purposes for which the artifact was designed.
The law of (stratigraphic) association is based on the principle that an artifact is
contemporary with the other objects found in the precise archaeological horizon (see
Figure 5.1). The mummy of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun was associated with an
astonishing treasury of household possessions and ritual objects. This association pro-
vided unique information on Egyptian life in 1323 B.C. The mummy alone would have
been far less informative.
The law of association is of great importance when ordering artifacts in chronological
sequences. Many prehistoric societies buried their dead with grave furniture – clay pots,
bronze ornaments, seashells, or stone axes. In some cases, the objects buried with a
corpse were obviously in use when their owner died. Occasionally, they may be prized
heirlooms, passed down from generation to generation. Together they are an association
of artifacts, a grave group that may be found duplicated in dozens of other contempor-
ary graves. But later graves may be found to contain quite different furniture or vessels
of a slightly altered form. Obviously some cultural changes have taken place. When
dozens of burial groups are analyzed in this way, the associations and changing artifact
styles may provide a basis for dividing the burials into different chronological groups
(see Figure 5.2).

Assemblages and Subassemblages

Human behavior can be individual and totally unique, or shared with other members of
one’s family or clan, or common to all members of the community. All of these levels of
cultural behavior should, theoretically, be reflected in artifact patterns and associations
in the archaeological record. The iron projectile point found in the backbone of a British
war casualty of A.D. 43 is the consequence of one person’s behavior, but that behavior is
clearly related to the common cultural behavior of the warrior’s society (see Figure 5.3).
Archaeologists use a hierarchy of units to group artifact associations, the lower levels
of which are as follows (for higher units, see Chapter 8):

• Subassemblages: A collection of artifacts associated with a single individual. For

example, a hunter uses a bow and arrows, which are carried in a quiver. An auto
mechanic employs a toolkit of wrenches, screwdrivers, and gauges.
• Assemblages: Dissimilar subassemblages of artifacts – let us say, hunting weapons
and baskets and also digging-sticks used in collecting plant foods – that occur in
association. The artifacts together reflect in their patterning the shared activity of
a group – an assemblage. This shared behavior is also reflected in the remains of
houses – in the nonportable artifacts such as storage pits and hearths, inside and
outside the house – and in community settlement patterns.
104 Space and Time

(a) Pit dug from this layer

Seated skeleton Burial pit

Dagger

(b)

Pot

Stone ax Stratigraphic break

(c)
Limits of clusters of
artifact patterns overlap.
Hut
Storage pits and artifact
patterns are in association
with huts.

Storage pits

(d)
Community A Both communities are
contemporary on the basis
of artifact context and
Stream chronometric dates.
Both are associated
with the same stream.
B Community

Figure 5.1 T
 he law of association: (a) a skeleton associated with a dagger; (b) a pot and a stone ax,
separated by a stratigraphic break, which are not in association; (c) two contemporary
household clusters associated with each other; (d) an association of communities that
are contemporary.

• Industries: Similar subassemblages at a site, which were made at the same time by
the same population.

The distinctions are straightforward. Some early Mexican villages consisted of group-
ings of square thatched houses. Each house contained subassemblages that reflected the
behavior of individual males and females – subassemblages inferred from artifact asso-
ciations and patternings. For instance, the houses in the ancient Maya village at Cerén,
preserved by volcanic ash, have revealed evidence of female domestic activities: food
preparation, cooking, and so on (see Chapter 9). The patterned household groups in the
village – that is, the associations of those subassemblages and the features associated
with them – make up the larger assemblage of human behavior in space that constitutes
the entire community.
 Space and Time 105

Group 3

Pottery Dagger Sword Ax Iron tools

Group 2

Broad
Pottery Dagger sword Ax

Group 1

Dagger
Pottery Stone Ax Stone tools
arrowheads

Sterile soil
Group 3 burials

Sterile soil
Group 2 burials
Sterile soil
Group 1 burials
Subsoil

Figure 5.2 B
 urial groups divided into chronological groups by assessing associated artifacts.
Group 1 burials contain no metal artifacts but simple decorated shallow bowls that
were made by all burial groups and show cultural continuity through time. The stone
arrowheads of Group 1 are replaced by metal swords; daggers continue in use, made
successively of stone, bronze, and iron. Continuity of artifacts is sufficient to place
groups in sequence using the law of association; this grouping was in fact confirmed
by stratigraphic observation, shown at the bottom.

Time
Time – our hectic lives depend on it. Only the other day, a harried student made an
appointment with BF after sifting through the crowded pages of her day-planner. She
could see that every half hour of the day was crammed with lectures, meetings, and
sports practice. We both commented on the tyranny of schedules, which never seem to
get easier, only more hectic. The hours of the day are the framework of our daily lives,
of our jobs and leisure time. Not for us the broad sweep of changing seasons or days
measured by sunrise and sunset. We depend on the clock to guide us through the day,
106 Space and Time

Figure 5.3 A
 n iron arrowhead embedded in the backbone of a British warrior killed during
a battle with Roman soldiers at Maiden Castle, England, in A.D. 43. This important
Celtic Iron Age fortress was stormed by a Roman legion in that year, a battle recon-
structed by British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler from excavations at the fort
entrance.
(Society of Antiquaries of London)

to regulate our lives. You are reading these words at a precise time and could, if you
wished, obtain a reading for the exact second that you read the word ‘time’. It is easy to
become obsessed with the passage and measurement of time.
Our sense of linear history spans our own lives and those of our parents and grand-
parents. BF has a dim memory of balloons on his second birthday and continuous
recollection from about age eight. His parents saw the elderly Queen Victoria driving
in a carriage in a London park in 1898 – more than a century ago. An Irish archaeo-
logical colleague’s father talked regularly to an elderly woman in his village, who
remembered French soldiers landing in Ireland in 1798. Two centuries is a long span
of living memory, but the history books give us a linear past that extends back to the
beginnings of writing in southwestern Asia more than 5,000 years ago. They tell us
that Washington, D.C., was founded in A.D. 1790, that Rome was established in 753
B.C., and that the famous Egyptian pharaoh Rameses II reigned from 1304 to 1237 B.C.
Looking earlier than 3000 B.C., however, we enter a chronological vacuum, a blank
that archaeologists have labored to fill with carefully assembled sequences of sites
and artifacts. Except in a very few areas, such as the American Southwest and parts of
 Space and Time 107
Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, where tree rings can be used to date prehistoric
sites very accurately, time must be measured in centuries and millennia, rather than
individual years. We may know that Washington, D.C., was founded in A.D. 1790, but
we will be lucky if we can ever date the beginnings of the city of Teotihuacán in Mexico
to closer than 200 ± 100 years B.C. Some idea of the scale of the problem can be gained
by piling up 100 quarters to represent the time that humankind has been on earth. The
length of time covered by historical records is considerably less than the thickness of
one quarter, because 99.9 percent of human experience lies in prehistoric times. Small
wonder that time is important in archaeology.
The prehistoric past is like a vast, empty landscape, which archaeologists have peo-
pled with thousands of archaeological sites large and small, each with its own charac-
teristic artifacts and other traces of long-forgotten human behavior. Each of these sites
with its contents has a precise context in time and space. Some sites, like Teotihuacán,
were occupied for hundreds of years. Other localities, such as Olduvai Gorge, were
inhabited for hundreds of thousands of years. Without dates, prehistory would be a
jumble of confusing sites and cultures devoid of order. How, then, do archaeologists
date the past?

Linear and Cyclical Time

Westerners think of the passage of the human past along a straight, if branching, high-
way of time. The great nineteenth-century German statesman Otto von Bismarck called
this the “stream of time,” on which all human societies ride for a time. The analogy is
apt if you think of time in a linear fashion, as archaeologists do.
An unfolding, linear past is not the only way of conceptualizing ancient times. Many
non-Western societies, ancient and modern, think of time as a cyclical phenomenon,
or sometimes as a combination of the linear and the cyclical. The cyclical perspective
stems from the passage of seasons and of heavenly bodies, from the close relation-
ships between foragers and village farmers and their natural environments. It is also
based on the eternal verities of human life: fertility and birth, life, growth, and death.
The endlessly repeating seasons of planting and harvest, of game movements or sal-
mon runs, and of ripening wild foods governed human existence in deeply significant
ways. The ancient Maya developed an elaborate cyclical system of interlocking secular
and religious calendars to measure the passage of the seasons and to regulate religious
ceremonies.
But we should not assume that societies with a cyclical view of time did not have
linear chronologies as well. The celebrated Maya “Long Count” was a linear chron-
ology that formed an integral part of the close relationship between Maya rulers and
the cosmos. The ancient Egyptians developed a linear chronology for administrative
purposes. But, in general, societies develop linear chronologies only when they need
them. For example, Western societies use linear time to regulate times of prayer, to con-
trol the working day, and for airline schedules. It is hard to generalize, but societies
with centralized political systems tend to use the reigns of chiefs or kings as signposts
along a linear time scale. For instance, the history of the rulers of the state of Benin in
West Africa shows a significant shift in the interpretation of time. Before the fourteenth
century A.D., Benin history is essentially mythological, with inaccurate chronology and
a variable number of kings. But with the founding of the Yoruba dynasty, the deeds and
reigns of every oba (king) are remembered in detail with chronological accuracy right
down to modern times.
108 Space and Time
Archaeologists refer to three types of chronology:

1. Relative chronology, which establishes chronological relationships between sites

and cultures.
2. Absolute chronology (as it is sometimes called), which refers to dates in
calendar years.
3. Chronometric chronology, which are dates in the form of date ranges established
by statistical probability.

Relative Chronology
BF’s black-and-white cat, the Venerable Bede, has just come into the study. (He is named
after an English monk of great piety of the seventh century A.D., but it must be admitted
that his behavior is most un-Bedelike.) Bulging with breakfast, he gives BF a plaintive
meow and looks for a patch of sunlight on the carpet. He spots one, just where BF has
laid down a pile of important papers. Thump! With a sigh, he settles down on top of the
documents and dozes blissfully as BF writes. Time passes. BF realizes that he needs one
of the articles in the pile under his faithful beast. He debates whether to have a cup of
coffee and procrastinate or to disturb the Venerable Bede knowing there will be angry
claws. In the end, writing deadlines prevail, and he gently elevates the cat and slips
the papers out from under him. The Venerable Bede protests half-heartedly and settles
down again as BF congratulates himself on escaping grievous injury.
The case of the Venerable Bede and the papers is a classic example of relative chron-
ology in action. Consider the sequence of four events. BF is sitting at his computer,
consults some documents, then lays them aside on the floor. This is the first event in the
sequence. Sometime later, the second event takes place. The cat settles on the publica-
tions and goes to sleep. More time passes. BF needs an article in the pile, lifts the cat,
and removes the papers. The final act of this stirring drama unfolds as the cat returns
to sleep. We’ve observed a sequence of events. However, beyond establishing that they
took place “after breakfast,” we have no idea exactly how much time passed between
each event in the sequence. In other words, we have a relative chronology of human
(and feline) behavior (see Figure 5.4).

The Law of Superposition

Our relative chronology of the Venerable Bede and the papers is based on a funda-
mental principle of archaeology and relative chronology: the law of superposition.
Superposition, the notion that underlying levels are earlier than those that cover them,
came to archaeology from geology. The geological layers of the earth are superimposed
one upon another, almost like layers of a cake. Easily viewed examples are cliffs by
the seashore or road cuts along the highway, which show a series of geological levels.
Obviously, any object deposited in the lower horizons usually got there before the upper
strata were accumulated. In other words, the lower levels are relatively earlier than the
later strata. The deposition of a series of occupation levels or geological strata in order
can be achieved by many processes: wind, water, earthquakes, and other factors. The
fundamental principles of context in time and space are borrowed straight from geol-
ogy, where observations of fossils and other phenomena in geological layers provide the
framework of geological time.
Superposition is fundamental to the study of the stratigraphy of archaeological sites,
for many settlements, such as desert caves in western North America or Mesopotamian
 Space and Time 109

Figure 5.4 T
 he relative chronology of the cat called the Venerable Bede. (The Venerable Bede was
a medieval British holy man and monk.)

mounds, were occupied more or less continuously for hundreds, even thousands, of
years. Human occupation of any site results in the accumulation of all kinds of rubbish.
Objects are lost and become embedded in the ground. Buildings fall into disrepair and
are leveled to make way for new ones. A flood may wipe out a village and deposit a
thick layer of silt. A new village may rise on the same spot years later. The sequence of
these superimposed occupation levels is carefully recorded as the excavation of a site
proceeds. Of course, not all settlements were occupied several times. Single occupation
sites, even very temporary camps, are studied just as carefully.
The sequence of natural and humanly accumulated layers on an archaeological site is
the basis for all stratigraphic observations in archaeology. But as Figure 5.5 shows, it is
110 Space and Time

Figure 5.5 T
 he principle of superposition. (a) A flourishing farming village 5,000 years ago.
After a time, the village is abandoned and the huts fall into disrepair. Accumulating
earth and vegetation cover the ruins. (b) After an interval, a second village is built
on the same site, with different architectural styles. This village in turn is abandoned;
the houses collapse into piles of rubble and are covered by accumulating earth. (c)
Twenty-first-century people park their cars on top of both village sites and drop litter
and coins that, when uncovered, reveal to the archaeologist that the top layer is mod-
ern. An archaeologist digging this site would find that the modern layer is underlain
by two prehistoric occupation levels, that square houses were in use in the upper of the
two, which is the later (law of superposition), and that round huts are stratigraphically
earlier than square ones here. Therefore, village 1 is earlier than village 2, but when
either was occupied or how many years separate village 1 from 2 cannot be known
without using absolute dating methods.

not only the carefully observed layers but their detailed contents as well that provide us
with relative cultural chronologies. Each level in a settlement has its associated artifacts,
objects that the archaeologist uses as indicators of technological, economic, social, or
even religious change.

Artifacts and Relative Chronology

Manufactured artifacts are the fundamental data archaeologists use to study past
human behavior. These artifacts have changed with passing time in radical ways. One
has only to look at the humble stone chopper of the earliest humans and compare it with
 Space and Time 111
modern-day surgical instruments to get the point. Most artifact changes in prehistory
are extremely small; minor changes in such characteristics as the shape, decoration, or
lip angle of clay pots accumulate slowly as they lead ultimately to a vessel form that is
hardly recognizable as originating from its ancestors.
The popularity of any artifact form is fleeting. Women’s skirt lengths rise above the
knee, then fall to mid-calf; clothing styles change from month to month. Recordings hit
the Top 40 but soon pass into oblivion. Other artifacts have a far longer life. The crude
stone flakes of the earliest humans were a major element in early toolkits for hundreds
of thousands of years. People used candles for centuries before they turned to kero-
sene and gas lamps. But each has its period of maximum popularity, or frequency of
occurrence, whether it lasts for millennia or for only a few months. Archaeologists use
seriation techniques to place artifacts in chronological order, on the assumption that
the popularity of any type of artifact, be it specific models of automobile, pottery types,
stone artifact forms, or other objects, peaks at a specific moment in time. If we plot the
frequencies with which these objects occur as a set of bars, they look like the hull of a
battleship glimpsed from an aircraft. The center of the hull bulges outward amidships,
where the armor is thickest, coinciding with the period of greatest popularity. This phe-
nomenon is sometimes called the battleship curve. Thus, it is argued, when sites within
a restricted geographic area contain similar pottery and other artifacts at an equivalent
rate of popularity, they are of approximately the same age. If the samples are statistic-
ally reliable, a series of sites can be linked in a relative chronology, even though, without
dates in years, one cannot tell when they were occupied.
A generation ago, archaeologists Edwin Dethlefsen and James Deetz tested this
battleship-curve assumption against the changing decorative styles on dated grave-
stones in New England colonial cemeteries (see Figure 5.6). They found that the changing
styles of death’s heads, cherubs, and urns succeeded one another in an almost perfect
series of battleship curves. Because the dates of the gravestones were known from their
inscriptions, the experiment could be conducted and tested within a precise chronological
context.
A series of archaeological sites may contain many different artifacts that appear and
vanish over relatively short periods. By applying seriation, it is possible to place the
different forms of artifacts in a series of relative chronologies, such as that from the
Tehuacán Valley, Mexico, illustrated in Figure 5.7. Each occupation level of each site con-
tains different proportions of each artifact form manufactured during that period. And
once you have a sequence of changing artifact frequencies, it is possible to fit isolated,
newly discovered sites into a relative chronology.

Cross-Dating
Seriation is effective for cross-dating sites as well. Let us assume that an English coin
dating to A.D. 1825 is traded in a California Indian village. The coin falls onto a hut
floor and is lost in the dust. In the 1990s, archaeologists find this dated coin in a strati-
fied level of the ancient village. They know it was traded into the settlement no earlier
than its date of minting, so the village was flourishing in, or after, 1825. They may find
more sites with the same Indian artifacts in similar proportions – but no coins – a few
miles away. When they seriate the finds, they will be able to cross-date the undated
settlements because their artifact frequencies are the same. This cross-dating technique
has been widely applied to central European prehistoric sites whose inhabitants traded
with literate civilizations in the Mediterranean basin, exchanging copper and other raw
materials for ornaments and other luxuries whose age is known.
112 Space and Time

Figure 5.6 R
 elative chronology: Ordering artifacts in relative chronological order involves tra-
cing changes in style through time. Gravestones from around the time of the American
Revolution from Shirley, Massachusetts, showing the cherub motif, which was most
popular between 1780 and 1789. Stylistic changes on New England tombstones have
provided a classic example of artifact seriation.
(Michael Dwyer / Alamy)

Obsidian Hydration
Every archaeologist dreams of a dating method that gives accurate ages for durable
artifacts like stone tools and potsherds. Obsidian hydration has potential for this
purpose. Obsidian is a natural glass formed by volcanic activity, often used by the
ancients for sharp-edged tools, mirrors, and ornaments. A freshly exposed obsidian
surface absorbs water from its surroundings, forming a measurable hydration layer
that is invisible to the human eye. The thickness of the hydration layer can be used
to develop absolute and relative chronologies for stone tools, but little is yet known
about the effects of temperature changes and chemical compositions of soil on hydra-
tion. Obsidian hydration has been used successfully in widespread archaeological
surveys around the Maya city at Copán, Honduras, to date isolated settlements, but
given the effects of local conditions is at present little more than a method for estab-
lishing relative chronology.

Absolute Chronology
Figure 5.8 shows the chronological spans of the major absolute and chronometric meth-
ods used to date the past.
 Space and Time 113

Figure 5.7 A classic pottery style seriation from the Tehuacán Valley, Mexico, showing many sites
ordered into a single sequence. Richard MacNeish classified the different pottery types
at each site, then placed them in chronological order on the basis of periods of max-
imum popularity for each type. Here the battleship-curve principle is used to develop
a sequence of changing pottery forms, each site being “fitted” into the sequence on the
basis of the percentage of each type represented.
(Adapted from R. S. MacNeish, F. A. Peterson, and K. V. Flannery, The Prehistory of the Tehuacan
Valley, vol. 3. Austin: Published for the Robert S. Peabody Foundation, Phillips Academy, Andover,
MA, by the University of Texas Press, 1970. © Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology, Phillips
Academy, Andover, MA. All Rights Reserved.)

Historical Records and Objects of Known Age

Historical records cover only the very smallest fraction of the human experience. King
lists and genealogies in early Egyptian and Mesopotamian archives give us dates in
years that go back to at least 3100 B.C. Recorded history starts in about 750 B.C. in the cen-
tral Mediterranean, about 55 B.C. in Britain. The first historical records for the Americas
begin with the Spanish Conquest, although the recently deciphered Maya script gives
us invaluable information about the Classic Maya civilization 1,500 years ago. Parts of
Africa entered “history” in A.D. 1890.
Fortunately, the literate civilizations of three or four thousand years ago traded their
products far and wide, so cross-dating is possible. The Egyptians traded fine ornaments
to Crete; the Cretans sent wine and fine pottery to the Nile. When archaeologist Arthur
Evans discovered Crete’s Minoan civilization in 1900, he dated the Palace of Knossos by
means of Minoan pottery fragments that had been excavated in faraway Egypt, in levels
whose precise historical date was known. In recent years, German archaeologists have
found brilliantly painted Minoan friezes on the walls of Avaris in Lower Egypt, confirm-
ing earlier evidence for trading connections.
114 Space and Time

Figure 5.8 M
 ajor chronological methods in prehistory. Experimental methods eliminated for
clarity.

Coins and other imports of known age can be used to date buildings or refuse
pits in which they were dropped centuries earlier. Archaeologists use a bewilder-
ing array of dated objects to date the recent periods of the past. These include glass
bottles and beads, seals, imported Chinese porcelain, even military buttons. Each
of these objects has the advantage of its age being exactly known. Objects of known
age – even such artifacts as barbed wire, beer and Coca-Cola bottles, and leather
shoes – provide excellent dating evidence on historic sites of the past four or five
centuries.

Tree-Ring Dating (Dendrochronology)

Everyone is familiar with the concentric growth rings that can be seen in the cross-section
of the trunk of a felled tree. These rings, formed in most trees, are of special importance
to archaeologists in areas such as the American Southwest, where the seasonal wea-
ther changes markedly and growth is concentrated during a few months of the year.
Normally trees produce two growth rings each year, which are formed by the cambium
between the wood and the bark. Each year’s growth forms a distinct ring that varies in
thickness according to the tree’s age and annual climatic variations. Weather variations
 Space and Time 115

Figure 5.9 Building a tree-ring chronology: (A) a boring taken from a living tree after the 1939
growing season; (B–J) specimens taken from old houses and progressively older ruins.
The ring patterns match and overlap back into prehistoric times.

in the Southwest tend to run in cycles of wet and dry years, which are reflected in pat-
terns of thicker and thinner rings on the trees.
The tree-ring samples are taken with a borer from living or felled trees. The ring
sequences from the borer are then compared to each other and to a master chronology
of rings built up from many trees with overlapping sequences tied to a known terminal
date. The patterns of thick and thin rings for the new sequences are matched to the
master sequence and dated on the basis of their accurate fit to the master sequence. By
using the California bristlecone pine, European oaks, and other trees, tree-ring experts
have developed a master chronology over 8,000 years back into the past (see Figure 5.9).
Tree-ring dating, usually called dendrochronology, can be practiced on long-felled
wooden beams to date the Indian pueblo buildings of which they were a part. Tree-ring
experts have been able to develop an extremely accurate chronology for Southwestern
sites that extend back as long ago as 322 B.C. It was a difficult task, for they had to con-
nect a prehistoric chronology from dozens of ancient beams to a master tree-ring chron-
ology connected to modern times obtained from living trees of known age. The dates of
such famed Southwestern sites as the Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde, Colorado, and Pueblo
Bonito in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (see Figure 5.10), are known to within a few years
because tree-ring chronologies are accurate to within a year. Such precision even allows
the dating of individual rooms within single pueblos. This requires care, since pueblo
builders sometimes reused much older timbers, which would give dates decades, even
centuries, earlier.
So many tree-ring sequences now come from the Southwest that dendrochronolo-
gists can study drought cycles as they spread across the region, especially the great
116 Space and Time

Figure 5.10 P
 ueblo Bonito, New Mexico, a large Southwestern pueblo built and occupied between
about A.D. 850 and 1130. The pueblo had five stories of rooms in a semicircle. The
round structures are kivas, subterranean ceremonial rooms. Pueblo Bonito was part
of the Chaco Phenomenon, an Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) trade and ritual network
centered on Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.
(4cornersarts / iStock by Getty Images)

drought of A.D. 1276 to 1299, which was one reason why the Ancestral Pueblo people of
the Four Corners region dispersed from their homeland (see Chapter 10).
Dendrochronology has been used in other areas of the world as well – in Alaska and
the American Southeast, and with great success in Greece, Ireland, and Germany. The
bristlecone pine is to the Southwest as oaks are to Europe. European tree-ring experts
have collected large numbers of tree-ring records from oaks that lived 150 years or so.
By visual and statistical comparison they have linked living trees to farmhouse and
church beams and to ancient trees found in bogs and prehistoric sites, providing a
tree-ring sequence that goes back 10,021 years in Germany and 7,289 years in Ireland.
European master chronologies are now astoundingly accurate. For example, tree-ring
samples established the felling date of a massive timber from a mysterious ceremonial
circle found on the seashore in eastern England to between April and June, 2050 B.C.
Dutch tree-ring experts have even dated the oak panels used by old masters for backing
their oil paintings as a way of authenticating paintings. And, in an elegant application of
tree-ring dating, British archaeologists have used a ring sequence from the Italian Alps
to date the spruce used to make a priceless Stradivarius violin called “The Messiah”
to 1716. They also established that it was made from the same piece of wood from the
mountains as two other violins made by the master!
 Space and Time 117

Chronometric Chronology
Chronometric chronology involves the use of scientific methods of dating the past that
yield not absolute dates in calendar years but statements of probability in the form of
date ranges. Such dating methods are used for the earlier millennia of the past.

Radiocarbon Dating
Radiocarbon dating, developed by physicists J. R. Arnold and W. F. Libby from 1949, is
the best known of all chronometric methods within archaeology. Cosmic radiation con-
tains neutrons that enter the earth’s atmosphere and react with nitrogen to produce the
carbon isotope carbon 14 (or C-14), which has eight rather than the usual six neutrons in
its nucleus. With these additional neutrons, the nucleus is unstable and subject to radio-
active decay. Arnold and Libby calculated that it took 5,568 years for half of the C-14 in
any sample to decay, the so-called half-life of C-14. (The half-life is now more accurately
measured at 5,730 years.)
The C-14 isotope is believed to behave just like ordinary carbon (C-12) from a
chemical standpoint. Together with C-12 it enters into the carbon dioxide of the
atmosphere. Because living vegetation builds up its own organic matter by photo-
synthesis and by using atmospheric carbon dioxide, the ratio of C-14 to C-12 in liv-
ing vegetation and the animals that eat it is equal to that in the atmosphere (see
Figure 5.11). As soon as an organism dies, no further radiocarbon is incorporated into
it. The radiocarbon present in the dead organism continues to disintegrate, so that
after 5,730 years half of the original amount is left; after 11,460 years, a quarter; and
so on. Thus, measuring the amount of C-14 still present in plant and animal remains
and emitting radiation enables us to determine the time that has elapsed since death.
By calculating the difference between the amount of C-14 originally present and that
now present, and comparing the difference with the known rate of decay, we can
compute the time elapsed in years.
The amount of C-14 in a fresh sample emits particles at a rate of about fifteen parti-
cles per minute per gram of carbon. A sample with an emission rate of half that amount
would be approximately 5,730 years old, the time needed for one half of the original
radioactive material to disintegrate (the half-life of C-14). When a C-14 date comes from
a laboratory, it bears a statistical plus or minus. For example, 3,600 ± 200 years (200 years
represents one standard deviation) means that chances are 2 out of 3 that the correct
date is between the span of 3,400 and 3,800. If we double the deviation, chances are 19
out of 20 that the span 3,200 to 4,000 is correct. Radiocarbon dates should be recognized
for what they are – statistical approximations.
Radiocarbon samples can be taken from many organic materials: charcoal, burned
bone, shell, hair, wood, or other organic substances. The samples themselves are col-
lected with meticulous care from particular stratigraphic contexts so that an exact loca-
tion, or a specific structure, is dated. For years, dating laboratories used a beta ray decay
rate to date C-14 samples. They now use accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS), which
allows radiocarbon dating to be carried out by direct counting of C-14 atoms rather than
by counting radioactive disintegrations (see Figure 5.12). The samples required are so
small that it is possible, for example, to date an individual tree ring.
Accelerator dating is especially useful for dating the amino acids from bone collagen,
but one can date almost any material, even tiny wood fragments preserved in the haft
sockets of metal spearheads. This makes it possible, for example, to date an actual corncob
118 Space and Time

Proton

Cosmic
ray Thermal
neutron 14N nucleus

Production

14C

Oxidation
14 CO2
Distribution
Photosynthesis

Mammoth

Two men with spears

Lake

Dissolved
CO2
14C 14N Carbonate
Decay Bicarbonate
Half life = c. 5700 years

Figure 5.11 T
 he principle of the radiocarbon dating method: production, distribution, and decay
of C-14.

in a Southwestern cave, a much better way of dating early agriculture than by merely using
the principle of association to link a cob with a dated feature or isolated charcoal sample.
AMS dating has revolutionized the dating of early agriculture in the Americas. For
instance, researchers had used conventional carbon dating to date the first appearance
of maize farming in Mexico’s Tehuacán Valley to at least 5000 B . C . AMS dates on actual
early cobs show that maize cultivation dates in the valley to no earlier than about 2700
B . C . Such agriculture dates to at least 5000 B . C . in the Veracruz lowlands near the Gulf
of Mexico. Dates from individual cereal seeds have dated agriculture on the banks
of the Euphrates River in Syria to about 10,000 B . C . , centuries earlier than previously
suspected.
The practical limits of radiocarbon dating are between 40,000 and 60,000 years.
Researchers have tried detecting C-14 atoms directly with a particle accelerator, a tech-
nique that would extend the limits of radiocarbon dating to as much as 100,000 years,
although at present its limits, mainly because of contamination carried into soil by roots,
are around 70,000 years.
 Space and Time 119

Figure 5.12 A
 ccelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating. Ionized carbon atoms from
the sample are first pulled in beam form toward the accelerator. As the beam passes
through the first beam-bending magnet, lighter atoms turn more sharply than heavier
ones. They move to the inside of the diverging beam, where a filter blocks the further
progress of all charged particles except those of atomic mass 14. When the beam enters
the accelerator, it is stripped of all molecules of mass 14 that might be indistinguish-
able from single carbon 14 atoms. The accelerator pushes the remaining ions through
a second beam-bending magnet, filtering out more non-carbon 14 particles. Then the
beam is focused before reaching an extremely sensitive detector that counts the num-
ber of remaining ions.
(Bruce D. Smith, The Emergence of Agriculture, New York: W. H. Freeman, 2nd edn., 1998.
© Bruce D. Smith. Reprinted by permission of the author.)

When Arnold and Libby first developed radiocarbon dating they compared their
C-14 readings with dates from objects of known age, such as ancient Egyptian boats.
These tests enabled them to claim that radiocarbon dates were accurate enough for
archaeologists’ purposes. But about twenty-five years later, just when archaeologists
thought they at last had an accurate and reliable means for dating the past, some radio-
carbon dates for dated tree rings of long-lived California bristlecone pines were pub-
lished. They turned out to be consistently younger – for trees dating to before 1200 B.C.
It turned out Libby had incorrectly assumed that the concentration of radiocarbon in
the atmosphere has remained constant through time, so prehistoric samples, when they
were alive, would contain the same amount of radiocarbon as living things today. But,
in fact, changes in the strength of the earth’s magnetic field and alterations in solar activ-
ity have considerably varied the concentration of radiocarbon in the atmosphere and in
living things.
Fortunately, however, it is possible to correct C-14 dates back to about 9000 B.C. by cali-
brating them with tree-ring chronologies, especially the long sequences for European
oaks. Some idea of the changes in accuracy of C-14 dating over the past 10,000 years
generated from tree-ring calibrations can be gathered from Table 5.1. Calibration of
120 Space and Time

Table 5.1 Changes in accuracy of C-14 dating over the

past 10,000 years generated from tree-ring calibrations.

Tree-Ring Calibrations Calibrated Age in Years

Radiocarbon Age A.D./B.C.

A.D.1760 A.D.1945
1505 1435
1000 1105
500 635
1 15
505 B.C. 767 B.C.
1007 1267
1507 1867
2007 2477
3005 3795
4005 4935
5005 5876
6050 7056
7001 8247
8007 9368
9062 9968

Calibrations Based on Uranium/Thorium and AMS Carbon 14

(Barbados)
AMS Radiocarbon Dates Uranium Thorium
Calibration
7760 B.C. 9140 B.C.
8270 10,310
9320 11,150
10,250 12,285
13,220 16,300
14,410 17,050
15,280 18,660
23,920 28,280

Notes
Increasing differences after 25,000 B.C. (calibrated)
Calibrations based on tables in Radiocarbon 40 (3), 1998. It should
be stressed that these calibrations are provisional, statistically
based, and subject to modification, especially before 7000 B.C.

dates earlier than 9000 B.C. is still at an experimental stage. Recently scientists have used
a new, highly accurate technique based on the decay of uranium into thorium to date
fossil coral near Barbados in the Caribbean and in the South Pacific. They compared
these dates to radiocarbon results and found that dates between 10,000 and 25,000 years
ago have increasing margins of error, as much as 5,000 years in earlier millennia.
Radiocarbon dates earlier than about 10,000 years ago must be treated as little more
than approximations.
Despite its chronological and technical limitations, radiocarbon dating is of enor-
mous significance. Some C-14 samples have dated African hunter-gatherers to before
50,000 years ago and Paleo-Indian bison kills on the Great Plains to earlier than 11,000
B.C. They have provided chronologies for the origins of agriculture and civilization in the
 Space and Time 121
New World and the Old. Radiocarbon dates are a means for developing a truly global
chronology that can equate major events such as the origins of literate civilizations in
such widely separated areas as China and Peru. The prehistory of the world from some
40,000 years ago up to historic times is dated almost entirely by the radiocarbon method.
Moreover, the dates are now becoming even more accurate thanks to the very latest
generation of radiocarbon dating, which is harnessing Bayesian statistics coupled with
meticulous site records and powerful computers.
This revolutionary technique has created a startlingly accurate new chronology to
replace the fuzzy timescales that were particularly prevalent for the prehistoric era. For
example, British long barrow tombs were once vaguely dated between 4000 and 3000
B.C., with different phases of construction work attributed to successive generations.
However, in the case of West Kennett long barrow near the Avebury stone circles, the
indefatigable researchers – who drew on thirty-one separate radiocarbon dates, under-
took 30 million separate calculations, and spent eleven hours in computer processing –
revealed its construction, use, and abandonment probably began in the 3640s B.C. and
ended within a mere thirty years.

Luminescence Dating
Luminescence dating, comprising optical stimulated luminescence (OSL) and thermo-
luminescence (TL), measures light emitted from baked clays, heated or burnt stone, and
windblown sediments like sand. The former is used predominantly on sediments, while
thermoluminescence helps date clays and burnt stone. Luminescence dating methods
are based on the fact that every material on earth receives a low level of radiation from
the radioactive elements in the environment. Exposure to radiation causes the electrons
to separate from atoms. Many solid materials store these electrons, which accumulate
steadily over time. When the solid is heated, the stored energy is released and emits
light. The age of the sample comprises the length of time since the object was heated to
a temperature higher than 3,500 degrees C.
OSL and TL have obvious applications for dating volcanic rocks and other geological
formations, but they can also be applied to humanly heated objects such as clay vessels,
heat-treated stone artifacts, or fired bricks.
Samples are taken by crumbling an object such as a potsherd, or by drilling tiny holes.
The laboratory measures the natural TL of the object with an alpha radiation counter,
the rate at which the sample has been obtaining radiation from the environment (by
monitoring the location where it was found), and the amount of TL produced by known
amounts of radiation. All of this assumes that the humanly manufactured object being
tested has been heated to a sufficiently high temperature, which is not always the case.
Unfortunately, many variables can affect the annual dose of radiation received by the
sample, and moisture can alter the effects of radiation, so many people regard lumines-
cence methods with suspicion.
Thermoluminescence is claimed to have an accuracy of about ±7 percent and is most
commonly used to date pottery or clay-fired objects between 50 and about 20,000 years
old. TL dates have also been applied to burnt flint and other siliceous toolmaking mate-
rials found in Stone Age rockshelters and burials, such as Neanderthal graves in Israel
dating to more than 40,000 years ago. A related dating method uses laser technology
to date the emissions from quartz and feldspar grains in archaeological layers. OSL
can date sites in the 100- to 100,000-year range by dating the sediments in which arti-
facts are found, and it is claimed to date the first settlement of Australia to as early as
60,000 years ago – although these dates are not uncontroversial.
122 Space and Time
Although TL has been used to date such developments as the appearance of anatom-
ically modern humans in southwestern Asia, most authorities agree that independent
verification from radiocarbon or other approaches is advisable.

Electronic Spin Resonance

Electronic spin resonance (ESR) measures radiation-induced defects or the density of
trapped electrons within a bone or shell sample without the need to heat them. This
promising dating method is somewhat similar to TL and has the advantages of being
nondestructive and being especially effective on tooth enamel as well as bone, allow-
ing investigators to date human fossil fragments up to about a million years old. ESR
has important applications for the study of early human evolution and has been used
to date Neanderthal teeth in southwestern Asia to about 100,000 years ago.

Uranium Series Dating

Uranium series dating measures the steady decay of uranium into various daughter
elements inside any formation made up of calcium carbonates, such as limestone or
cave stalactites. Because many early human groups made use of limestone caves and
rockshelters, bones and artifacts embedded in calcium carbonate layers can sometimes
be dated by this method, using techniques somewhat similar to those used in radio-
carbon dating. Uranium series dating is most effective when applied to sites between
50,000 and 1 million years old.

Potassium-Argon Dating
Potassium-argon dating has provided general chronologies for earlier prehistory.
Geologists use this method to date volcanic rocks as early as 4 to 5 billion years old and
as recent as 100,000 years before the present. Potassium (K) is one of the most abundant
elements in the earth’s crust, present in nearly every mineral. In its natural form, potas-
sium contains a small proportion of radioactive 40K atoms. For every 100 40K atoms
that decay, 11 percent become 40Ar (argon), an inactive gas that can easily escape from
its present material by diffusion when lava and other molten rocks are formed. As vol-
canic rocks form by crystallization, the concentration of 40Ar drops to almost nothing,
but the decay of 40K continues, and 11 percent of every 100 40K atoms become 40Ar. It
is possible, therefore, using a spectrometer, to measure the concentration of 40Ar that
has accumulated since the rock formed.
Many early archaeological sites, such as those at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, were
formed during periods of intense volcanic activity. Dates have been determined for con-
temporary volcanic ashes, sometimes stratified above and below places where human
tools and broken animal bones lie. Louis and Mary Leakey were able to determine
potassium-argon dates for artifact and bone scatters at Olduvai, where early human
fossils were found (Figure 5.13). The samples gave readings of about 1.75 million years.
Even earlier dates have come from sites at Hadar in Ethiopia and Laetoli in Tanzania,
both in East Africa, where volcanic materials associated with early human fragments
have been dated by potassium-argon techniques to between 3 and 4.5 million years ago.
Stone flakes and chopping tools have come from Koobi Fora in northern Kenya, dated to
about 2.6 million years.
 Space and Time 123

Figure 5.13 Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.

(DenGuy / iStock by Getty Images)

Potassium-argon dating is getting ever more accurate, and 1- to 4-million-year-old

East African dates now have standard deviations in the 20,000- to 50,000-year range.
Recent improvements in dating techniques have both reduced statistical errors and
extended the range of potassium-argon dates into the past 100,000 years.

Fission Track Dating

Many minerals and natural glasses, such as obsidian, contain tiny quantities of uranium
that undergo slow, spontaneous decay. The date of any mineral containing uranium
can be obtained by measuring the amount of uranium in the sample, which is done
by counting the fission tracks in the material – narrow trails of damage in the sample
caused by fragmentation of massive energy-charged particles. The older the sample, the
more tracks it possesses. Volcanic rocks are ideal for fission track dating, such as those
common at Olduvai Gorge and other early human sites. The volcanic level under the
earliest hominin sites at Olduvai has been dated to 2.03 ± 0.28 million years ago, which
agrees well with potassium-argon dates from the same location. This method is often
used as a check on potassium-argon dates.
124 Space and Time

Discovery
Eruption at Akrotiri, Greece, 1967
Only rarely do archaeologists find sites associated with direct evidence of ancient climatic or
natural phenomena that can be dated reasonably accurately. A half century ago, Greek archae-
ologist Spyridon Marinatos speculated that the flamboyant Minoan civilization of Crete was
severely damaged by a huge volcanic eruption that blew the center of the island of Santorini
(Thera), 62 miles (100 kilometers) north, into space in about 1688 B.C. Few archaeologists agreed
with his theory. Undeterred, Marinatos searched diligently for Minoan sites on Santorini, but he
found that everything was buried under massive volcanic ash deposits. In 1967, he heard
reports from farmers of masses of stones close underground in the fields around Akrotiri in
the south of the island. So dense were the boulders that the farmers could not plow their land.
Marinatos began digging into places where the ground had collapsed between the subterra-
nean masonry and promptly discovered the ‘Greek Pompeii’, an island town of 3,500 years ago
completely buried by pumice and ash when the volcano erupted (see Figure 5.14).
Akrotiri’s houses are remarkably well preserved, their stone and timber walls often two stor-
ies high. Brilliant polychrome frescoes still adorn some of the rooms, depicting religious and
military scenes, the island landscape, animals, and plants (see the chapter opener photo-
graph). Food storage jars still stand in the basements of the houses. But there was no trace
of the inhabitants, who had fled when ominous subterranean rumblings began. The imported
Minoan pottery at Akrotiri is at least twenty to thirty years earlier than that from the latest levels
of Cretan villages, proving that Marinatos was wrong. The Santorini eruption did not des-
troy Minoan civilization, whose palaces flourished less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) away.
A major earthquake about 200 years later contributed to the demise of the Minoan state.

Figure 5.14 T
 wo-story houses perfectly preserved under volcanic ash at Akrotiri, Santorini
Island, Aegean Sea, Greece. The site is protected under a roof for tourists.
(Louisa Goulimaki / AFP / Getty Images)
 Space and Time 125
This array of absolute dating methods has developed a provisional chronology for
the human past.

SUMMARY
1. Space in archaeology is the exact location of an archaeological find in latitude,
longitude, and depth, which together identify any point in space absolutely and
uniquely.
2. The context of space has close links to ancient human behavior. Human behavior
leaves patterns of artifacts in the archaeological record, which we study by spatial
analysis. Archaeologists use this context by examining associations between arti-
facts and other evidence of human behavior.
3. Western archaeologists think of the human past as having a linear chronology, in
contrast with many other societies that believe human existence is governed by cyc-
lical time scales.
4. Archaeologists use two ways to date the past – relative and absolute chronology.
5. Relative chronology, the study of the chronological relationships among different
sites, artifacts, occupation layers, and other features, is based on the principle of
superposition. This principle, which originated in geology, states that the lower
stratum is the earlier.
6. Seriation techniques allow archaeologists to place artifacts in relative chronologies;
large-scale climatic changes during the Ice Age provide a chronological framework
for earlier prehistory.
7. Absolute (or chronometric) chronology is the dating of the past in calendar years.
Archaeologists use historical records and documents to date the past 5,000 years.
8. For earlier times, they employ three major techniques: (1) dendrochronology,
or tree-ring dating, uses the annual growth rates in oaks and other trees to date
human societies in Europe, the American Southwest, and other areas back at least
8,000 years; (2) radiocarbon dating, the measurement of the decay of radiocarbon
isotopes, allows the dating of sites as early as 40,000 years ago, with dates cali-
brated by tree rings or coral reefs extending back to about 15,000 years ago; and
(3) potassium-argon dating, another isotopic dating method mainly used by geolo-
gists, uses volcanic rocks to date early Stone Age sites and the origins of humankind
some 3 to 4 million years ago.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What are the differences between absolute and relative chronology, and what are
the limitations of the latter?
2. Why is seriation important in archaeology, and how does it work?
3. What are the major methodological problems archaeologists face when dating
the past?

FURTHER READING
Thomas Hester, Harry J. Shafer, and Kenneth L. Feder, Field Methods in Archaeology, 7th edn.
(Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2008), contains invaluable essays on stratigraphy and
dating. No one has yet rivaled Sir Mortimer Wheeler’s classic description of stratigraphy
126 Space and Time
in his Archaeology from the Earth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954). Dating techniques are
mainly described in journal articles, but M. J. Aitken, Science-Based Dating in Archaeology
(New York: Longman, 1990), is informative. R. E. Taylor, Radiocarbon Dating: An Archaeological
Perspective (Orlando, FL: Academic Press, 1987), is an excellent account. A. G. Wintle’s paper
“Archaeologically Relevant Dating Techniques for the Next Century,” Journal of Archaeological
Science 23(1) (1996): 123–138, is technical and invaluable. On the topic of space, once again, V.
Gordon Childe, Piecing Together the Past (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956), is one of
the few general accounts. Much of the literature for this chapter is scattered in periodicals;
consult an expert.
newgenprepdf

6 They Sought It Here, They

Sought It There
The Process of Research and Finding
Archaeological Sites

CHAPT ER OU TL I N E
The Process of Archaeological Research 129
Design and Formulation 129
Implementation 131
Data Acquisition 131
Processing and Analysis 132
Interpretation 133
Publication 133
Stages of Archaeological Fieldwork 134
Accidental Discovery 134
Remote Sensing, or Archaeological Survey in the Laboratory 137
Google Earth 138
Aircraft and Satellite Imagery 138
Aerial Photography 142
Archaeological Survey at Ground Level 143
Sampling and Archaeological Survey 146
Recording Archaeological Sites 147
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) 148
Assessing Archaeological Sites 150
Surface Collection 150
Subsurface Detection Methods 151
128 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There

A street at Pompeii, buried by an eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79.

(FaberDesign / iStock by Getty Images)

PREVIEW
How do you find archaeological sites? Chapter 6 describes the all-important process of
archaeological research, then focuses on the accidental or deliberate finding of archaeo-
logical sites of all kinds. This is what is known as nonintrusive archaeology, archaeo-
logical survey both on the ground and using a wide variety of remote-sensing methods.
These include both photographs taken from aircraft and satellite imagery. We describe
the recording of sites, including geographic information systems, which allows research-
ers to look at site distributions in their changing environmental contexts. The chapter
ends with a brief discussion of subsurface detection methods.
BF will never forget the first time he went out in the field in Africa looking for Stone
Age sites. Two of us were walking through a dry river valley, where river gravels
showed through the stunted dry-season grass. His experienced companion walked with
 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There 129
his eyes glued to the ground, picking up Stone Age scrapers without apparent effort.
BF moved at half his speed, puzzling over every piece, for he had not done this before.
After half an hour they had hundreds of 100,000-year-old artifacts, collected from acres
of gravel that had been sorted again and again by floodwaters. Artifacts from dozens of
campsites had been mingled together in a hodgepodge of brown-colored artifacts and
waste flakes. Suddenly, his companion bent down and picked up a broken flake. “That’s
the other half of a flake I collected in 1938,” he declared. “Impossible,” BF replied. But he
was right. When they got back to the museum, they opened the 1938 collection and the
two pieces fitted together perfectly. It was a sobering lesson in the power and precision
of an experienced archaeological eye. Since then, BF has found many sites and artifacts
on his own, but he is still in awe at his late colleague’s incredible memory.
How do you know where to dig? How do you find sites? Many people are amazed
at how archaeologists seem to have an uncanny ability to choose the right place for
their excavations. Part of this ability is having a good eye for landscape, a penchant
for putting yourself in the shoes of the people you are seeking, and, yes, just plain
old-fashioned common sense. However, formal survey methods play an important role
in archaeological fieldwork, especially today when many projects are carried out under
fast-moving cultural resource management projects. This chapter explores the ways in
which archaeologists discover and assess archaeological sites, a fundamental part of
field research (see the Discovery box on p. 132).

The Process of Archaeological Research

There was a time when archaeologists concentrated most of their efforts on excavat-
ing single sites. They would choose a promising location, excavate it, and study the
recovered artifacts without worrying too much about the environmental setting or the
broader context of their excavation. Today, archaeologists, whatever their theoretical
perspective, think in the field in terms of interactions between humans and their nat-
ural environment, of sites in a landscape. In part because of the influence of cultural
resource management, the focus has shifted away from excavation toward regional
studies, studies with specific, problem-oriented perspectives, and also toward formal
research design. In many cases, excavation is the strategy of last resort, for, as every
archaeologist knows, to dig a site is to destroy a finite record of the past. But, whatever
the type of field or laboratory work, archaeological research proceeds in the following
general stages (see Figure 6.1).

Design and Formulation

The problem is defined, its feasibility tested, and the entire background for the project is
researched very carefully. This is the research design, which can take many forms. But
all research designs have certain common elements:

• A context. The design should reflect a larger set of goals and fit into a larger body
of archaeological knowledge. How does it contribute to the understanding of the
archaeological record?
• Explicit and meaningful research questions to be answered that match the scope of
the project. These questions or hypotheses create the environment for linking your
work to larger goals.
130 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There

Figure 6.1 The process of archaeological research.

• Definitions of the data to be collected and the methods to be used to collect it. This
is a methodological overview, but one that’s flexible enough to allow for changes
onsite as the research unfolds.
• Information on how you will analyze your finds and report them. This plan has
to be in place before any fieldwork starts, as such work is just as much a part of
research as survey or excavation.
• Accommodation to the “real world” that surrounds the research, be it a popular
audience, a business client, or government policies. How are you going to present
your work to the wider world? This aspect of the work is especially important
in the CRM (cultural resource management) world. As Stephen Black and Kevin
Jolly remark: “The CRM arena is everyday life itself, a world changing so fast that
most of us feel like we can’t keep up” (Black and Jolly, 2003: 4). How right they are!

All archaeological research begins with specific questions, questions that the
researcher seeks to answer through a sequence of steps in archaeological research.
Much depends on the nature of the research to be conducted. Some projects seek
to answer large questions, for example: How and from where did Paleo-Indians on
the northern Great Plains obtain toolmaking stone? Others are highly specific: What
were the deep-sea fishing practices of the people living at a site on the south coast
of Santa Cruz Island off the southern California coast in 1000 B.C.? In many cases, the
formulated questions proceed from the broad to the narrow, allowing researchers to
follow a logical sequence from one topic to the next. For example, an investigator on
the deep-sea fishing site might hypothesize that dolphin fishing from planked canoes
was the main deep-sea fishing activity. The accompanying statements could predict
that dolphin bones will constitute over 75 percent of the fish remains in the site; bone
fishhooks would be the dominant artifact (say, 65 percent). Many researchers content
themselves with informal statements of expectations on which to base their investiga-
tions. For example, Paleo-Indian groups in such and such an area were 93 miles (149
kilometers) from the nearest chert outcrop; this is where they are most likely to have
obtained their toolmaking stone.
 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There 131
A research design is both academic and logistical. A flexible design divides the
research process into specific stages, each of which, in turn, is carefully designed
to carry out certain functions. Together they form a sequence of investigation that
divides the flow chart into stages – not that the stages necessarily follow one upon
the other in close order. Several may be carried out simultaneously. The design may
or may not be a formal process, but it must be flexible and fluid enough to accommo-
date ever-changing circumstances in the field as well as individual needs. Many CRM
research designs for small-scale projects like the investigation of a single building lot
or a limited area of land are more or less standardized, but they are flexible enough
to accommodate different circumstances. Either formally or informally, the research
design spells out how the questions posed for the project will be investigated – by sur-
vey, by excavation of specific types at certain specified locations – and what methods
and specialized techniques will be used, in either very general terms or in specific
detail. The logistics are directly related to the archaeological problem. What funds
and equipment will be needed for the work? How many people will be involved?
What specialized tests and permits will be needed? How will finds be curated when
the work is over?
The finished research design for a purely academic project includes not only a defin-
ition of the research problem but also a statement of specific goals, including sampling
strategies to be used and specific hypotheses to be tested. It is also an accurate defin-
ition of the kinds of data the research team will be looking for to test its hypotheses.
However, flexibility is essential if the research is not to be shackled too tightly. CRM
projects are normally designed and carried out within tightly drawn boundaries to
ensure that they comply with legal requirements that the client, perhaps a developer
or state roads department, has to fulfill – the compliance process. Some such projects
have elaborate research designs. The one for the large-scale Federal Aid Interstate-270
Archaeological Mitigation Project in southern Illinois in the 1980s revolved around no
fewer than twelve basic questions and involved the processing of enormous amounts
of data, much of it uncovered using earthmoving machinery.
In a sense, a research design is like a flow chart, for it is created both to monitor the
validity of research results and to maximize efficient use of money, people, and time.

Implementation
Fund-raising, an eternal problem for academic archaeologists; gaining permission for
access to land and to excavate; acquiring equipment and a workforce – all of these are
important ingredients of the implementation stage. CRM projects normally start with a
competitive bidding process, have tightly drawn budgets, and are carried out on often
precise timetables. Much of the planning work is effectively standardized, as is the cost-
ing, and the company or organization involved usually has a pool of equipment and
archaeologists to do the work available at short notice.

Data Acquisition
Data acquisition is accomplished when field research takes place and can be a regional
survey, a smaller-scale project, or an excavation.
132 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There

Processing and Analysis

Archaeological finds come in many forms – as artifacts, food remains, houses, human
skeletons, and so on. These finds are usually cleaned, identified, and cataloged in the
field before being packed for transport to the laboratory. Once back from the field,
these data – including not only finds but also the detailed notes, drawings, and other
recorded data acquired in the field – are subjected to analysis. At this stage some spe-
cific materials, such as radiocarbon samples and pollen grains, are sent to specialists
for analysis. Most laboratory analysis involves detailed artifact classification and study
of animal bones and other food remains – the basis for the later interpretation of data
(see Chapters 10 and 11). This is a particularly important stage of the work on CRM
projects, where an inventory of sites, finds, and other information is a basic part of
compliance.

Discovery
The Nubian Kings of Kerma, Sudan, Early First Millennium B.C.
Many of archaeology’s most spectacular discoveries date from the early twentieth century,
when large-scale excavations were commonplace. Harvard University’s George Reisner
(1867–1942) learned his archaeology with the famed British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie
before World War I. As did his mentor, he believed in the importance of even the smallest
artifacts. He was one of the first archaeologists to excavate in ancient Egyptian Nubia, now
part of the Sudan. In 1913, he excavated a series of royal burial mounds at Kerma, the cap-
ital of a once-powerful African state in the early second millennium B.C.
The kings lived in considerable state and went to their deaths in great splendor. Reisner
described royal burial mounds with large numbers of small chambers that contained many
sacrificial victims. Using the stains on the room floors, Reisner estimated that at least
400 people had been killed alongside one dead ruler, all of them, including members of
his immediate family, on the same day. Reisner theorized that the victims had entered
the small chambers, had lain down in a position of rest, and had then been buried alive.
Many of the bodies lay in attitudes that communicated fear, resignation, and the kinds of
convulsions resulting from death by slow suffocation. The adults lay mainly in restful posi-
tions, but some young females had crawled under beds and other furniture, there to perish
slowly in stagnant air pockets. Some of the dead had held their head in their hands or put
it between their thighs. Some clasped one another. Reisner argued that the act of sacrifice
was a gesture of loyalty, of comfort and continuity that assured the continuation of a royal
life in eternity.
Reisner (1923) wrote a vivid account of the ululation and chanting as the funeral pro-
cession wended its way to the mound (see Figure 6.2). The royal corpse was laid in its
chamber, the fine grave offerings laid out in order as the ruler’s wives and attendants took
their places in the chambers, “perhaps still with shrill cries or speaking only such words as
the selection of their places required.” Then, at a signal, the waiting crowd cast baskets
of sand into the open chambers and onto the still, but still-living, victims on the floors. As
the sand rose in the mound, there was a “rustle of fear” that passed through the dying as
hundreds of baskets masked them from view. The crowd now feasted on the hundreds of
cattle slaughtered in honor of the dead ruler, butchering the beasts and cooking the meat
to the west of the tumulus and placing the skulls in a great crescent on the south side of the
mound. Reisner’s imaginative reconstruction was based on acute observation and careful
excavations.
 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There 133

Figure 6.2 A royal tomb at Kerma, Sudan. People rush to complete the mound as burial takes place.
(Brian M. Fagan)

Interpretation
At the stage of interpretation, everything is brought together into an interpretive syn-
thesis to answer the research questions posed in the original design. Anthropological
and historical models usually provide the most consistent interpretations of the archaeo-
logical record (see Chapter 4). Few CRM projects involve broad interpretive syntheses, as
their terms of reference are confined to a highly specific area, which may literally be no
larger than the right of way for an oil pipeline or a highway corridor.

Publication
In an ideal world, no research project is complete until the final results are published
in a form accessible to other scholars. An unpublished site is effectively destroyed not
only by the excavations but by the absence of any permanent record of the findings.
Unfortunately, there is a huge backlog of unpublished excavations and surveys all
over the world, something biblical archaeologist Hershel Shanks has called “archae-
ology’s dirty little secret.” Most academic archaeologists enjoy digging more than
analysis and are under constant pressure to raise more money for fieldwork and new
discovery. There is little money for print publication. CRM contracts end with the com-
pletion of the final report on the project, usually a formal requirement of the contract.
134 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There
Relatively few of these are formally published, although many CRM archaeologists
strive to bring their work to a wider scholarly audience. Moreover, online publishing
is also proving to be a particularly interesting development; while increasing numbers
of archaeologists are beginning to make their data available online via apps and web-
sites, for example the United Kingdom’s CITiZAN project, a nationwide project that
is setting out to record the country’s disappearing coastal and estuary heritage (see
www.mola.org.uk).

Stages of Archaeological Fieldwork

Archaeological fieldwork has three stages, the first two of which are discussed in this
chapter:

1. Finding archaeological sites. The process of actually locating sites, which is either
by accident or the result of deliberate archaeological survey.
2. Assessing the sites. Nonintrusive archaeology, which involves recording the loca-
tion of sites, surface finds, and sometimes electronic subsurface detection.
3. Archaeological excavation. The investigation of the site by means of excavation (see
Chapter 7).

Increasingly, excavation is a strategy of last resort. Many important projects focus

on survey and site assessment using surface data, to preserve the archaeological
record.

Accidental Discovery
Finding archaeological sites involves far more than merely locating a prehistoric settle-
ment to dig. Some archaeological sites are so conspicuous that people have always
known of their existence. The pyramids of Giza in Egypt have withstood the onslaught
of tourists, treasure hunters, and quarriers for thousands of years (see Figure 2.2 on
p. 34). The Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacán, Mexico, is another easily visible archaeo-
logical site (see Figure 12.7 on p. 291).
The eastern United States is dotted with hundreds of burial mounds and earthworks,
which are easily distinguished from the surrounding countryside. One well-known
early archaeologist simply hired a riverboat each summer and sailed along digging
sites he saw on the riverbanks. Cemeteries may be marked by piles of stones, and the
deep accumulations of occupation deposits at the mouths of rockshelters or caves or
the huge piles of abandoned shells left by mollusk collectors are more readily located.
Sites of this type are obviously simple to identify and often have been known for cen-
turies. For instance, in some parts of California, ancient shell middens (shell heaps)
are recognizable at a considerable distance by their gray soil and the stunted grass
growth on them.
Most archaeological sites are far less conspicuous. They may consist of little more than
a scatter of pottery fragments or a few stone tools lying on the surface of the ground.
Other settlements may be buried under several feet of soil, leaving few surface traces
except when exposed by moving water, wind erosion, or burrowing animals. Finding
archaeological sites depends on locating such telltale traces of human settlement. Once
 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There 135

Figure 6.3 Clovis Paleo-Indian points from the Great Plains of North America.
(Carolina Biological / Visuals Unlimited / Corbis)

the sites have been found, they have to be recorded, and surface collections must be
made at each locality to assemble a general impression of the activities of the people
who lived there.
Accidental discoveries of sites, spectacular artifacts, or skeletons have revealed
whole chapters of the past. Cowboy George McJunkin was searching for a lost cow
near Folsom, New Mexico, in 1908, when he noticed some sun-bleached bones project-
ing from the soil of a dry gully. He pried loose a few bones and a stone spear point
and took them home with him. They lay around the ranch house for seventeen years
before they came to the attention of Jesse Figgins, director of the Colorado Museum
of Natural History. Figgins identified the extinct bison bones at once and wondered
whether the owner of the stone spearhead had killed the animal. Excavations at Folsom
revealed more stone points directly associated with bison bones, the first such find in
North America. From this chance discovery came direct proof that humans had hunted
now-extinct animals in North America soon after the Ice Age, as early as 10,000 years
ago (see Figure 6.3).
The Cerén Maya village in El Salvador came to light when a bulldozer operator
exposed a long-buried house mantled under feet of volcanic ash and completely invis-
ible from the surface. Some boys out hunting rabbits in 1940 found the magnificent Ice
Age paintings in Lascaux Cave in southwestern France when their dog became trapped
in an underground chamber entered through a rabbit hole.
136 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There

Figure 6.4 A
 reconstruction of the central precinct of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, with the great
pyramid of the sun god Huitzilopochtli and the rain deity Tlaloc to the left.
(INTERFOTO / Alamy)

Dramatic finds have resulted from despoiling of the environment. Deep plowing and
freeway and dam construction have led to the uncovering – and damaging – of priceless
sites. When Mexico City’s metro (subway) was constructed under the modern city dur-
ing the 1970s, the 28 miles (45 kilometers) of tunnels yielded a wealth of archaeological
material. Mexico City is built on the site of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, overthrown
by Hernán Cortés in 1521. Little remains of the Aztec city on the surface today, but the
contractors for the metro recovered 40 tons of pottery, 380 burials, and even a small tem-
ple dedicated to the wind god Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl. The temple is now preserved on its
original site as part of the Piño Suarez station of the metro system. All of the tunneling
operations were under the supervision of expert archaeologists, who were empowered
to halt construction whenever an archaeological find was made.
Even more dramatic was the accidental rediscovery of the great Templo Mayor in the
heart of Mexico City. Modern construction activity revealed the most sacred shrine of
Aztec Tenochtitlán: the temples of the gods Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc. Mexican archae-
ologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma’s excavations subsequently unearthed at least five
successive temples and many rebuildings going back to as early as A.D. 1390, if not earl-
ier (see Figure 6.4). The temple visited by Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés had 114
steps and a drum so loud it could be heard 6 miles (10 kilometers) away. The conquista-
dors pulled it down to build a Catholic cathedral nearby. The abandoned shrines were
forgotten until the 1970s.
 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There 137

Figure 6.5 S
 ome of the 15,234 gold and silver coins from a late Roman hoard of the late fourth
century A.D. The hoard, from Hoxne in eastern England, was buried in an iron-bound
wooden box and included expensive jewelry and silver tableware, including over 100
spoons and ladles.
(CM Dixon / Print Collector / Getty Images)

Nature itself sometimes uncovers sites for us, which are then located by a sharp-eyed
archaeologist looking for natural exposures of likely geological strata. Olduvai Gorge is
a great gash in the Serengeti Plains of northern Tanzania. An ancient earthquake eroded
a deep gorge, exposing hundreds of feet of lake beds that had been buried long before
(see Figure 5.13 on p. 123). These buried lake deposits have yielded early tool and bone
concentrations dating back at least 1.75 million years. They would never have been
found without the assistance of an earthquake and subsequent erosion. The Olduvai
area is but one of many examples from all over the world where nature has revealed the
incredible bounty of the past.
The fields of the Western world have yielded many caches of buried weapons, coins,
smith’s tools, and sacrificial objects – valued treasures that were buried in times of stress
by their owners. For whatever reason, the owners never returned to recover their valu-
ables. Thousands of years later, a farmer comes across the hoard and, if a responsible
citizen, reports the find to archaeological authorities. If not, yet another valuable frag-
ment of the past is lost to science (see Figure 6.5).

Remote Sensing, or Archaeological Survey in the Laboratory

Archaeological survey begins not on the ground but in the laboratory, for satellites, glo-
bal positioning systems (GPS), and aerial photographs are powerful tools for assessing
138 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There
the potential of survey areas and planning work on the ground. This is nondestructive
archaeology – the analysis of archaeological phenomena without excavations or collect-
ing of artifacts, both of which destroy the archaeological record. Generically referred
to as remote sensing, such methods include Google Earth and other satellite imagery,
aerial photography, and magnetic prospecting methods.

Google Earth
Today, many archaeologists begin with cheap and readily accessible remote sensing –
with Google Earth. Google Earth (GE for short) is software that allows anyone with a
computer to obtain a comprehensive aerial view of the world. Basically a highly detailed,
high-resolution map of the world, you can use a geographic information system client
(easily installed on your machine) to add labels known as placemarkers to the maps to
mark the locations of sites and other archeological data – to say nothing of restaurants
and other attractions. Once your placemarkers are located, you simply post them to a
bulletin board at Google Earth. Your markers can be simply location points, or you can
add all kinds of data to suit your needs. There is even a somewhat disorganized “Find
the Archaeology” game on the Google Earth Community Bulletin Board. Someone posts
an image of a site: you have to guess where or what it is.
One of the longest-running archaeological remote-sensing projects is in the Arroux
Valley area of Burgundy in France, where a team of scientists from many disciplines
are studying the complex and changing interactions between different societies and
the physical environment. Researcher Scott Madry has identified over a hundred
French sites using Google Earth, a quarter of which were previously unrecorded. Other
researchers have recorded earthworks in Ohio, used GE to traverse the Inka trail in
the Andes, and explored Southwestern pueblos. An excellent starting point to browse
is www.jqjacobs.net/archaeo/sites/. But be warned that Jacobs predicts that you may
soon suffer from Google Earth addiction!
In another example, Australian archaeologist David Thomas was unable to go on a
field survey in the Registan desert of Afghanistan owing to security concerns. Instead,
Thomas and his research team used Google Earth at a height of 300 meters (984 feet) to
locate what he thinks are 450 potentially significant sites in a hitherto virtually unex-
plored landscape. The locations include campsites, villages centered on mosques, ani-
mal corrals, and water features like dams. Archaeologists in many parts of the world are
now using Google Earth, especially with CRM projects involving extensive surveys and
for more remote locations where access is difficult.
Google Earth will never replace survey on the ground, but it can provide valuable
information on the potential benefits of a foot reconnaissance – and also allow you to
tour ancient Rome in 3D.

Aircraft and Satellite Imagery

In some areas, exuberant vegetation hampers archaeological surveys, especially in the
Maya lowlands. For years, archaeologists have wondered how the Maya civilization
managed to feed itself and have puzzled over the incompletely known distribution of
its cities and ceremonial centers. Originally they believed the Maya population was sup-
ported by slash-and-burn cultivation, a milpa system still used today, in which people
burn off and clear the forests, then cultivate the land for three or four years before leaving
it fallow and moving on to virgin plots. The soils of the Maya lowlands, not particularly
 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There 139
fertile, are vulnerable to soil erosion when cleared of vegetation and exposed to heavy
rain. The Classic Maya population was far larger than such fields could support.
Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, was an important center of Ancestral Pueblo settle-
ment a thousand years ago (see Figure 5.10 on p. 116). Here, archaeologist Gwinn
Vivian mapped linear features that he thought were irrigation canals. When he dug
into them, he found that they were deliberately leveled and carefully designed road-
ways. He mentioned his findings to Thomas Lyons, a geologist, and together they
examined aerial photographs of the canyon, including some taken by early aviator
Charles Lindbergh, which dated to before the time when grazing was permitted there.
They soon found clear traces of a road system, commissioned more flights, and iden-
tified more than 186 miles (300 kilometers) of road segments. When NASA flew over
Chaco with a thermal infrared multispectral scanning (TIMS) device, they located a
further 186 miles (300 kilometers) of roads. TIMS measures the infrared thermal radi-
ation given off by the ground and is sensitive to even small differences. A computer
converts the data from the camera into false-color images that map the terrain in terms
of infrared radiation. The Chaco roads showed up as clear, tan lines against the sur-
rounding red sand, and yet they are only up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) deep, their
existence virtually unknown until remote sensing came along. Google Earth is now
proving useful in tracking the Chaco roads. A generation of archaeologists has puzzled
over the Chaco road system, for they are certainly not highways in the Western sense.
Often, the roads are just short segments, which end in the middle of nowhere. Most
segments are straight, others turn abruptly or are lined by low berms. We don’t know
whether they were incomplete, or, more likely, symbolic depictions of sacred direc-
tions. They converge on Chaco, where rock-cut stairways lead down the precipitous
cliffs (see Figure 6.6).
The best-known source of aircraft-borne sensor imagery is sideways-looking air-
borne radar (SLAR), which senses the terrain on either side of an aircraft’s path, with
the instrumentation tracking the radar pulse lines in the form of images whether or not
clouds obscure the ground. A group of archaeologists looking for a sensor system that
would penetrate the dense forest cover of the Maya area discovered an unexpected
archaeological payoff in the imaging radar developed by NASA for spaceborne lunar
sounders and in synthetic aperture radar. (The radar chosen for the Maya experiment
was, in fact, developed for imaging the surface of the planet Venus.) On flights made
over the Maya lowlands in 1978 and 1980, black-and-white and color infrared film
were used to capture indications of archaeological sites and ancient landscape modi-
fications. When the features discovered were plotted onto topographic maps, they
revealed not only shadows of large mounds and buildings but also irregular grids of
gray lines within swampy areas near known major sites. These lines were found to form
ladder-and-lattice as well as curvilinear patterns that closely matched conventional
aerial views of known canal systems in the Valley of Mexico and the lowlands. Ground
surveys revealed that the Maya grew large food surpluses using large-scale swamp
agriculture, developing field systems that are nearly invisible on the ground today.
Satellite sensor imagery is used for both military and environmental monitoring.
The best-known satellites are the LANDSAT series, which scan the earth with readers
that detect the intensity of reflected light and infrared radiation from the earth’s surface.
The latest images pick up features only 90 feet (27 meters) wide; the French SPOT satel-
lites can work to within 60 feet (18 meters). Computer-enhanced LANDSAT and SPOT
images can be used to construct environmental cover maps of large survey regions that
are a superb backdrop for both aerial and ground surveys for archaeological resources.
Recently, NASA’s World-Wind satellite imagery and other government sources have
140 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There

Figure 6.6 The Jackson Stairway at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.

(DeepEarth Photography / Alamy)

become available on the Web, as has Google Earth, which, like World-Wind, provides
dynamic imagery and a good search tool, a mosaic of photographic images laid over
3D landscape models that provide a topographic backdrop. Corona and Ikonos satellite
imagery also hold promise.
The space shuttle Columbia used an imaging radar system to bounce radar signals off
the surfaces of the world’s major deserts in 1981. This experiment was designed to study
the history of the earth’s aridity, not archaeology, but it identified ancient river courses
in the limestone bedrock 5 feet (1.5 meters) or more below the Sahara Desert surface. All
remote sensing is useless unless checked on the ground, so a team of geologists, includ-
ing archaeologist C. Vance Haynes of the University of Arizona, journeyed far into the
desert to investigate the long-hidden watercourses. About the only people to work this
terrain were the World War II British Army and present-day Egyptian oil companies,
the latter of which kindly arranged for a skip loader to be transported into the desert. To
Haynes’s astonishment, the skip-loader trenches yielded some 200,000-year-old stone
axes, dramatic and unexpected proof that early Stone Age hunter-gatherers had lived
 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There 141

Figure 6.7 A
 n illustration of LIDAR ‘removing’ vegetation cover around the eighth- to
ninth-century A.D. mountain-temple of Rong Chen, in the Kulen Mountains, to the
north of Angkor. Top layer: aerial photography acquired during the LIDAR campaign
showing a patchwork of slash-and-burn fields and forest cover that obscures the arch-
aeological remains, represented in 3D using the ‘non-ground’ LIDAR returns. Bottom
layer: a hillshaded representation of the archaeological topography, represented in 3D
using the ‘ground-only’ LIDAR returns; to the left is a grid of mounds, in the center is
the mountain-temple of Rong Chen, and to the right is a complex network of smaller
temples and urban elements. The bottom side of the mountain is 656 feet (200 meters)
long and north is toward the lower right of the image.
(Cambodian Archaeological LIDAR Initiative / Damian Evans)

in the heart of the Sahara when the landscape was more hospitable than it is today.
The Haynes find is of cardinal importance, for African archaeologists now believe the
Sahara was a vital catalyst in early human history that effectively sealed off archaic
humans from the rest of the Old World. In later times, sub-Saharan Africa was isolated
from the Mediterranean world until camel caravans opened up the desert in the first
millennium A.D.
The latest remote-sensing technology is laser altimetry, sometimes called LIDAR
(light detection and ranging), which is the optical equivalent of radar. This uses a laser
range finder to measure height, which can yield accurate and dense digital models of
topography, even the vertical structures of buildings and trees, from the air. LIDAR
provides astonishingly precise images of everything from standing ruins like pueblos to
abandoned pithouse depressions and European medieval towns. It is still very expen-
sive, but offers great promise for the future (Figure 6.7).
LIDAR has revealed the true extent of Angkor Wat and been used to study the Maya city
of Caracol in Belize. After years of laborious ground research, LIDAR revealed more than
150 square kilometers (58 square miles) of agricultural terraces, buildings arranged around
squares, waterways and numerous reservoirs as well as caves. These are but two exciting
applications of a technology that is already revolutionizing our knowledge of archaeological
142 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There
sites large and small, and entire landscapes. But, despite its success, there is ultimately no
substitute for on-the-ground investigation, which is the follow-up stage of LIDAR research.
Radar imagery from space and other remote-sensing technologies are the high
point of nonintrusive archaeology. They are at their best when combined with other
remote-sensing data acquired from aerial photographs and such technologies as
ground-penetrating radar.

Aerial Photography
Aerial photography is the grandfather of remote-sensing technologies, having been
around since World War I. The building of today’s inventories of archaeological sites
would never have been possible without aerial survey techniques. Aerial photography
gives an overhead view of the past. Sites can be photographed from many directions, at
different times of day, and at various seasons. Numerous sites that left almost no sur-
face traces have been discovered by analyzing aerial photographs. Many earthworks
and other complex structures have been leveled by plows or erosion, but their original
layout shows up clearly from the air (see Figure 6.8). The rising or setting sun can make
large shadows, emphasizing the relief of almost vanished banks or ditches; the features
of the site stand out in oblique light. Such phenomena are sometimes called shadow
sites. BF once had a chance to fly over southern England’s chalk country two days after
snow had mantled the rolling countryside. The ridges and hedgerows stood out sharply
in the oblique light. So did the circular earthworks of Avebury, the standing stones cast-
ing long shadows in the chill winter sunlight (for Avebury, see Chapter 12 opener).
In some areas, it is possible to detect differences in soil color and in the richness of
crop growth on a particular soil. Such marks are hard to detect on the surface but often
show up clearly from the air. The growth and color of a crop are greatly determined by
the amount of moisture the plant can derive from the soil and subsoil. If the soil depth
has been increased by digging features such as pits and ditches, later filled in, or because
additional earth has been heaped up to form artificial banks or mounds, the crops grow-
ing over such abandoned structures are high and well nourished. The opposite is also
true where soil has been removed and the infertile soil is near the surface or where
impenetrable surfaces such as paved streets are below ground level and the crops grow
less thickly. Thus a dark crop mark can be taken for a ditch or pit, and a lighter line may
define a more substantial structure. Time and time again, we’ve walked over a plowed
field with an aerial photograph and had great difficulty spotting the crop mark on the
ground. But they are there if you look closely enough, photograph in hand.
Much of the world has been photographed from about 24,000 feet (7,000 meters) by
military photographers. Such coverage has been put to use by archaeologists to survey
remote areas such as the Virú Valley on Peru’s north coast, where a team of archaeolo-
gists led by Gordon Willey plotted 315 sites on a master map of the valley. Many of
the sites were stone buildings or agricultural terraces; others were refuse mounds that
appeared as low hillocks on the photographs. By using aerial surveys, Willey saved
days of survey time, for he was able to pinpoint many sites before going out in the field.
When the settlements were visited, the fascinating story of shifting settlement patterns
in Virú over thousands of years was made visible by a combination of foot survey and
air photography.
Aerial remote-sensing devices of many types have become available in recent years to
complement the valuable results of black-and-white photography. Infrared film, which has
three layers sensitized to green, red, and infrared, detects reflected solar radiation at the
 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There 143

Figure 6.8 Long-forgotten earthworks and burial mounds revealed by dark crop marks.
(Fotolincs / Alamy)

near end of the electromagnetic spectrum, some of which is invisible to the naked eye. The
different reflections from cultural and natural features are translated by the film into dis-
tinctive false colors. Vigorous grass growth on river plains shows up in bright red. Such
red patterns have been used in the American Southwest to track shallow, subsurface water
sources where springs were used by prehistoric peoples. The infrared data could lead the
archaeologist to likely areas for previously undetected hunting camps and villages.

Archaeological Survey at Ground Level

No remote-sensing technology can completely replace ground surveys, which get
up-close and personal with archaeological sites. Archaeological survey means walk-
ing – a large-scale survey means lots of it, day after day, week after week, on carefully
laid-out transects that cross hill and dale. I always enjoy survey, for you develop a sense
of the local landscape, meet all kinds of people, and get a unique impression of a place
you might otherwise never encounter. And there is always the prospect of an import-
ant discovery. We have spent weeks looking for Stone Age rockshelters in southwestern
England and found no traces of human occupation whatsoever; returned from a fort-
night in Arabia with records of a previously uncharted ancient settlement, a stone circle,
and a dozen midden sites; and walked in the Maya rain forest where you can see for
only a few feet on either side. Survey is fascinating because no two days are alike and
the rewards can be immense.
144 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There
An archaeological survey can vary from spending an afternoon searching a city lot
for traces of historical structures to doing a large-scale survey over several years of an
entire river basin or drainage area. In all cases, the theoretical ideal is easily stated: to
record all traces of ancient settlement in the area. But this ideal is impossible to achieve.
Many sites leave no traces above ground. And no survey, however thorough and how-
ever sophisticated its remote-sensing devices, will ever achieve the impossible dream of
total coverage. The key to effective archaeological survey lies in carefully designing the
research before one sets out and in using techniques to estimate the probable density of
archaeological sites in the region.
Archaeological surveys are most effective in terrain where the vegetation is burned
off or sparse enough for archaeologists to be able to see the ground. In lush vegetation
areas such as those of the American South, only the most conspicuous earthworks will
show up. And, of course, thousands of sites are buried under housing developments,
parking lots, and artificial lakes, which have radically altered the landscape in many
places.
A great deal depends on the intensity of the field survey. The most effective surveys
are carried out on foot, where the archaeologist can locate the traces of artifacts, the gray
organic soil eroding from a long-abandoned settlement, and the subtle colors of rich
vegetation that reveal long-buried houses. Plowed fields may display revealing traces
of ash, artifacts, or hut foundations. Scatters of broken bones, stone implements, pot-
sherds, or other traces of prehistoric occupation are easily located in such furrowed soil.
Observation is the key to finding archaeological sites and to studying the subtle rela-
tionships between prehistoric settlements and the landscape on which they flourished.
Archaeologists have many inconspicuous signs to guide them. Gray soil from a
rodent burrow, a handful of humanly fractured stones in the walls of a desert arroyo, a
blurred mark in a plowed field, a potsherd – these are the signs they seek. After a few
days, you learn to spot the telltale gray earth sent up by burrowing animals from vil-
lage sites from some distance off. And often, knowledgeable local inhabitants, especially
landowners who have an intimate knowledge of their own acreage, provide informa-
tion on possible sites.
There is far more to archaeological survey than merely walking the countryside,
however. Such surveys can be of varying intensity. The least intensive survey is the
most common: the investigator examining only conspicuous and accessible sites, those
of great size and considerable fame. Heinrich Schliemann followed just this procedure
when he located the site of ancient Troy at Hissarlik in Turkey in the 1870s. John Lloyd
Stephens and Frederick Catherwood did the same when they visited Uxmal, Palenque,
and other Maya sites in Mesoamerica in the early 1840s. Such superficial surveys barely
scratch the archaeological surface.
A more intensive survey involves collecting as much information about as many
sites as possible from local informants and landowners. Again, the sites located by this
means are the larger and more conspicuous ones, and the survey is necessarily incom-
plete. But this approach is widely used throughout the world, especially in areas where
archaeologists have never worked before.
Many more discoveries are made if archaeologists undertake a highly systematic sur-
vey of a relatively limited area. This type of survey involves not only comprehensive
inquiries among local landowners but also actual systematic onsite checking of those
reports. The footwork resulting from the checking of local reports may lead to more
discoveries. But, again, the picture may be very incomplete, for the survey deals with
known sites and does not cover the area systematically from one end to the other or
establish the proportions of each type of site known to exist in the region.
 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There 145
The most intensive surveys have a party of archaeologists covering a whole area by
walking all over it, often in straight lines, with a set distance between them. Such sur-
veys are usually based on carefully formulated research designs. The investigators are
careful to check that their site distributions reflect actual settlement patterns rather than
where archaeologists walked.
Some such surveys have thrown light on rural life in ancient Greece by identifying
the locations of individual farmsteads and small villages. Without resorting to expen-
sive and time-consuming excavation, the research teams have used surface finds, such
as pottery, to provide dating evidence for the sites, and have thus been able to show
changing patterns of settlement from prehistory to the present day. At the same time,
these surveys have found evidence for ancient Greek farming practices. One key dis-
covery was the so-called halo of artifacts that surrounds many sites. Some ancient cities
have haloes extending over several square miles. They result from intensive manuring –
the carting out of animal dung, human excrement, and other organic wastes (including
the accidental admixture of discarded pottery and other cultural material) and spread-
ing them over the fields to increase fertility. Such an intensive agricultural practice is
an indication of the high population density of many regions of Classical Greece. It
was during this period, too, that extensive stone terraces were built on hillsides, again
reflecting population growth and the need to increase agricultural productivity, in this
case by creating new farmland.
What did the landscape of Classical Greece look like? A Stanford University research
team carried out intensive field surveys in southern Greece of the southern Argolid at
the eastern end of the Peloponnese. The researchers discovered several hundred arch-
aeological sites of all periods and collected 45,000 ceramic pieces, mainly potsherds.
Analysis of this huge body of material, coupled with study of soils and landscape, ena-
bled them to chart changes in the settlement of the region from prehistory to the present
day. The number of sites reached a peak during the fourth century B.C., when the area
around the Classical town of Halieis became an important center of olive oil production,
revealed by a combination of different kinds of evidence.
Rural settlements appear at this time on stony river plains and lower hill slopes,
areas that give poor cereal yields but are ideal for olives. Olives were probably grown
on terraces built on the hillsides, indicating a more labor-intensive use of the landscape.
Further evidence for the production of olive oil comes from oil presses found both at
rural farmsteads and at Halieis itself. At the same time, cereal growing continued on the
fertile and water-retentive deeper soils.
The importance of olive oil production on the fourth-century Plain of Argos in south-
ern Greece may well be linked to political events in neighboring regions, notably the
destruction of Athenian olive groves by Spartan forces during the Peloponnesian War
(431–404 B.C.). Olive trees take many years to mature, and Athens would have been
dependent on imported supplies for several decades. The Plain of Argos is geograph-
ically close to Attica and would have been well placed to supply that need. Thus the
southern Argolid survey provides an illustration of the intimate way in which rural
fortunes may be linked to the politics of the wider world (see Figure 6.9).
Clearly, most archaeological surveys can record only a sample of the sites in the sur-
vey area, even if the declared objective is to plot the position of every prehistoric settle-
ment. Such was the purpose of an ambitious survey of the Basin of Mexico, home of the
Teotihuacán and Aztec civilizations of the past 2,000 years. The investigators managed
to chronicle the changing settlement patterns in the basin since long before Teotihuacán
rose to prominence after A.D. 100 right up to the Spanish Conquest and beyond. But they
would be the first to admit that they have recovered only a fraction of the Basin’s sites.
146 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There

Figure 6.9 O
 live trees in Greece. Olive oil was a staple of ancient trade and exchange across the
eastern Mediterranean world.
(Akarelias / Thinkstock by Getty Images)

For a start, most of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, and its outlying suburbs lie under the
foundations of Mexico City (see Figure 6.4 on p. 136).

Sampling and Archaeological Survey

In the early days, archaeologists concentrated on conspicuous, easily found sites. Now,
with so many sites endangered by all kinds of industrial development, they hurry to
locate as many prehistoric locations as possible. Often, a survey is designed to make an
inventory of archaeological sites in a specific area. When an area is to be deep-plowed or
covered with houses, the burden of proof that archaeological sites do or do not exist in
 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There 147
the endangered zone lies with the archaeologists. Time is often short, and funds are very
limited. The only way the archaeologists can estimate the extent of the site resource base
is to survey selected areas in great detail, using formal sampling methods.
Sampling is the science of controlling and measuring the reliability of information
through the theory of probability. Systematic and carefully controlled sampling of arch-
aeological data is essential if we are to rely heavily, as we do, on statistical approaches in
studying ancient adaptations to changing environmental conditions. Few modern arch-
aeological surveys fail to make use of sampling, for many site distributions reflect the
distribution of archaeologists rather than an unbiased sampling of the archaeological
record. This bias applies particularly in vegetated areas like the eastern woodlands of
North America and the Mesoamerican and Amazonian rain forests, where the cover is
so thick that even new roads are in danger of being overgrown within weeks. Sampling
ensures a statistically reliable basis of archaeological data from which we can make gen-
eralizations about our research data. Such generalizations are often estimates of prob-
ability, which means they have to be based on unbiased data.
Sampling in archaeological survey typically can involve element sampling, where
one selects arbitrary grid samples randomly over a large area. This is useful for esti-
mating the densities of archaeological sites over a research area. Alternatively, cluster
sampling governs a survey made up of arbitrary survey units defined by area, a sam-
ple of which are examined for inventories of archaeological remains. Any given sam-
pling unit may contain a cluster of elements, a sample of sites, artifacts, or features in
which each sampling unit is a collection (cluster) of elements. Thus statistical popula-
tion is made up of a number of clusters, each with a specific number of elements, which
determine cluster size. This approach is useful when, for example, you want to exam-
ine the properties of individual sites, not of arbitrary units in a grid covering a research
area. What is the proportion of sites in Mexico’s Valley of Oaxaca with seashells dating
to 1000 B . C . ? What is the average site area of settlements within the sampling area,
and so on?
Formal sampling provides a means for generalizing from the sample survey areas
to larger regions. The reliability of these generalizations is tested by routine statistical
procedures. This approach to archaeological survey, often called predictive modeling,
is a powerful weapon to counter the destruction of archaeological sites by industrial
activity.
Archaeologists cannot stop the destruction of every threatened site. The best they
can hope for is a chance to make decisions on which sites in the archaeological resource
base are to be preserved, which will be excavated before destruction, and which will fall
to destruction in the name of progress. More and more archaeology in North America
is such cultural resource management and results from efforts to conserve sites and to
manage a diminishing resource base. CRM projects make intensive use of sampling
surveys.

Recording Archaeological Sites

Once sites have been identified, whether by field survey or satellite imagery, their loca-
tion, features, and extent are carefully recorded. These data can be used to address various
research questions or cultural resource management concerns. For example, studies of
changing settlement distributions plotted against environmental data provide significant
information on changing human exploitation of the landscape Thus, recording the precise
global location of archaeological phenomena revealed by a survey is a high priority.
148 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There
Information on site location can be recorded in a variety of ways. It is not enough
just to record the precise latitude, longitude, and map grid reference. Special forms are
used to record the location of the site, as well as information about surface features,
the landowner, potential threats to the site, and so on. Every site in the United States is
given a name and a number. Sites in Santa Barbara County, California, for example, are
given the prefix CA-SBa- and are numbered sequentially. So many sites are now known
in North America that most states and many large archaeological projects have set up
computer data banks containing comprehensive information about site distributions
and characteristics. Arkansas, for example, has a statewide computer bank that is in
constant use for decisions on conservation and management.
Maps are a convenient way of storing large quantities of archaeological information.
Traditionally, recording was done entirely by hand, but the increasing availability of a var-
iety of computer mapping programs has facilitated both site recording and data storage.
An important advance in recent years has been the advent of low-cost GPS units, which
locate sites using satellite positioning systems. Handheld GPS units can be used in a var-
iety of environmental settings and enable fieldworkers to locate sites within a few feet.
They are especially advantageous in settings where roads and other identifiable features
are limited or where vegetation makes plotting sites on topographic maps challenging.
With larger regional investigations and extensive CRM projects, especially in the western
United States, remote sensing and GPS are used to record and manage archaeological sites.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

Distribution maps have been part of archaeology for generations, but, in themselves,
they are little more than clusters of dots on maps, perhaps with topography added.
Many early maps reflected the distribution of archaeologists and their finds rather
than the true density of sites across the landscape. Geographic information systems
(GIS), which appeared during the 1980s, have revolutionized the storage and display of
cartographic data, including archaeological sites. Geographic information systems are
computer-aided systems for the collection, storage, retrieval, analysis, and presentation
of spatial data of all kinds. GIS incorporates computer-aided mapping, computerized
databases, and statistical packages and is best thought of as a computer database with
mapping capabilities. It also has the ability to generate new information based on the
data within it.
You can now view archaeological sites in all kinds of geographic contexts simply
by pressing a few computer keys – to the point that you can even sometimes look at
sites against the topography and vegetation of the day. GIS comprises three elements: a
powerful computer graphics program that draws the digital map, one or more external
databases linked to the items on the map, and a series of analytical tools that inter-
pret and statistically analyze the stored data in graphic form. As a long-term project,
most U.S. states are putting their databases of archaeological sites on GIS, using U.S.
Geological Survey topographic maps, which are available in digital form.
We always think of GIS in terms of layers, the basic layer being the topographic map,
to which you add layer after layer of information such as vegetation, water sources,
archaeological sites, and so on – preparing a map that can display all kinds of different
information, which can be changed at will. The metaphor is a base map, upon which
you pile layers of tracing paper or transparent plastic that display different kinds of
data. Instead, you use a georeferenced database where all the data, be it about soils or
sites, is recorded using the same mapping system. Each data point has its own database
where information such as artifact frequencies, unusual finds, and so on are displayed,
 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There 149
to say nothing of architectural features, storage pits, or contour lines. In short, the past
is at your fingertips, and in such a format that you can ask questions of your map. How
far away from a specific village were acorn-rich oaks to be found? What food resources
and toolmaking materials lay within 3 miles (5 kilometers) of the settlement? How far
did people have to walk to reach the best soils for cultivating maize? You can even bring
up the landscape in such a way that you can see the same view as the ancient inhab-
itants saw, an important strategic concern when you are afraid of raiders or surprise
attacks from the sea. GIS does what archaeologists have done for generations – look at
sites in the context of their environment – but it does it in a fraction of the time that it
used to take and with far greater sophistication and precision – once the databases are
constructed, an extremely lengthy process but one that makes sense when you are con-
cerned with inventorying sites and predictive surveys.
From the archaeological perspective, GIS has the advantage of allowing the
manipulation of large amounts of data, especially useful for solving complex settle-
ment analysis problems at places like the Roman towns of Pompeii, Italy, and Wroxeter,
England (for Wroxeter, see Chapter 12). Now the archaeologist can examine, for
example, the environmental potential of areas where no sites have been found to
assess the overall distribution of sites within the environment. CRM archaeologists
make extensive use of GIS data in their work, which provide instant, and often com-
prehensive, information on environmental and archaeological data from regions
large and small.
GIS also allows archaeologists to model different environmental scenarios and to
study such problems as the ways in which different settlements controlled valuable land.
British archaeologist Vincent Gaffney has recently produced a remarkable “virtual land-
scape” of Stonehenge at the various stages of its construction, which allows one both to
“walk” the landscape and to reconstruct the sight lines from various features to the stone
circles.
The Italian archaeologists responsible for Roman Pompeii, which was overwhelmed by
an eruption of Vesuvius on August 24, A.D. 79, have used GIS technology to capture and
interpret life in the town as it was 2,000 years ago, employing a computerized database
of material excavated since 1862. They used an IBM computer to digitize archaeological
maps and local terrain, to integrally link visual representations of the artifacts to both the
detailed descriptions of each find from the city and to the locations in which they were
found. The thousands of computerized pictures of specific artifacts are linked to the maps
to provide detailed insights into individual houses, rooms, and walls, the places where
the finds were excavated. This “Neapolis” system with its 50 gigabytes of detailed infor-
mation about Pompeii can be used to study such topics as the relationships between life-
style and distribution of wealth, the spread of fashions and trends, or correlations of fresco
motifs on house walls from one end of the town to the other. In this instance, GIS is used
to understand relationships not readily perceived by the human mind – the myriad inter-
connections that tie works of art, buildings, and individual artifacts to an entire culture
and community. Recent excavators at Pompeii have used iPads to record information from
their trenches.
The most comprehensive North American GIS project is the National Archaeological
Database, an online system that now contains over 100,000 records of archaeological
reports. Any archaeologist with a telephone line or on an electronic mail system can
now access this archive, which also provides comprehensive site distribution from many
states and background environmental information through the Geographic Resources
Analysis Support System (GRASS), the GIS system used by the National Park Service
(www.cast.uark.edu/other/nps/nadb).
150 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There

Assessing Archaeological Sites

Assessing the significance of an archaeological site without excavation has become
increasingly important as the catastrophic damage done to the archaeological record
has hit crisis proportions. Thus, surface recording and assessment as well as subsurface
detection methods have assumed great importance.
Site assessment involves several processes:

• Accurate mapping of the site and recording its precise geographic location. It is not
enough just to record a site on a map, even if this is a GIS record with background
environmental data. Special forms are used to record location, unusual features,
and information on surface features, landowner, and so on. The site is given a name
and number, and any potential threats to the resource are noted. This form is the
basis for an entry in any pertinent computer database of archaeological sites.
• Surface collection of artifacts and other finds on the ground surface of the site – but
this is not an invariable part of assessment.
• Subsurface investigation using electronic detection methods. These are used when
the investigator suspects that significant features lie below the surface, both to
acquire information and to form a basis for the research design.

Surface Collection
Controlled surface collection is a vital part of site assessment, for representative sam-
ples of artifacts from the modern ground surface can provide vital information on the
age of the site and the various periods of occupation. For example, a pueblo site in the
American Southwest might yield several forms of painted pottery, which, on the basis of
stratigraphic observations elsewhere, can be placed in chronological order.
The same samples can sometimes be used to establish what activities took place on
the site. A large sample of obsidian lumps and waste flakes might, for instance, be a clue
that a quarry once flourished at the location. By plotting surface finds on a grid laid out
over the site, the investigators can sometimes establish which areas of the site were most
densely occupied and would be most productive for excavation. They may also reveal
the presence of important structures below the surface.
Surface deposits can yield valuable information on artifact distributions and other
phenomena lying underground. For this reason, surface collections form an important
part of any archaeological survey, especially one that seeks to establish the limits of an
ancient city or different housing areas, such as was the case at Maya Copán or Roman
Wroxeter.
Many archaeologists distrust surface collections, arguing that artifacts are easily
destroyed on the surface and can be displaced from their original positions. But this
viewpoint neglects a fundamental archaeological truth. All archaeological deposits,
however deep, were once surface layers, subject to many of the same destructive pro-
cesses as those outcropping on the surface today. In fact, with controlled surface col-
lection involving random or some other sampling technique, present land surfaces can
yield much valuable information on artifact distributions or other phenomena found
underground, provided, of course, they have not been subjected to strip mining, deep
plowing, or other catastrophic modifications.
With carefully controlled surface collection and a clear understanding of the relation-
ship between surface finds and those found below the ground, accurate site assessments
are often possible. The large-scale survey of the hinterland of Copán relied heavily on
 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There 151
surface collecting to identify sites large and small and to assess their significance. CRM
surveys also rely heavily on surface collection.

Subsurface Detection Methods

All archaeologists dream of a new and revolutionary method that will enable them to
find out what is underground without the labor of excavation! Thanks to radar and other
electronic devices, modern technology shows promise of actually achieving this elusive
goal. Ken Weeks and a team of fellow Egyptologists have embarked on a long-term pro-
ject to map all of the royal tombs in Thebes’s Valley of Kings. They have used a hot-air
balloon, X-rays, and sonic detectors to map subterranean features and hidden chambers
in royal tombs. The team recently discovered a long-lost tomb with many subterra-
nean chambers built for the sons of the great New Kingdom pharaoh Rameses II (see
Figure 13.5 on p. 314).
Nonintrusive detection methods include the use of metal detectors, which have a
bad name in the hands of treasure hunters but are an effective way of finding artifacts
to depths of about 8 inches (20 centimeters) in properly supervised hands. Resistivity sur-
veys use electric current transmitted through electrodes planted in the soil to detect sub-
surface structures like building foundations through their higher resistivity. Readings
are taken across a grid laid out over the site when attempting to plot features like house
foundations, pits, or stone walls. Electromagnetic survey is the opposite of resistivity,
measuring the conductivity of features like walls, which is low, while the resistivity of
the same structure is high. This method is faster, does not require electronic probes, and
can be used to locate structures over large areas, such as was done at Cahokia, the great
Mississippian ceremonial center near East St. Louis, Illinois.
Subsurface (ground-penetrating) radar has proved effective on a wide variety of
sites, using a lower-power antenna, but the data often requires expert interpretation.
British archaeologist Vincent Gaffney used radar to plot the layout of much of the
Roman town of Wroxeter in western England.
Magnetometer surveys are also commonplace, using the fluxgate gradiometer, which
provides magnetic readings as the surveyor walks along the grid lines across a site. The
readings can be downloaded at the end of the session and provide a contour map of
subsurface anomalies that may represent the results of human activity. Magnetometers
have proved especially effective on sites with few surviving surface features, such as
villages on the North American Plains.
Very often, researchers will combine several nonintrusive methods, as archaeologist
Payson Sheets did at the Maya village of Cerén in El Salvador. The site was buried
under up to 16 feet (5 meters) of volcanic ash and was first located by a chance bull-
dozer cut. Obviously, it was not economical to bulldoze large areas, so Sheets turned
to ground-penetrating radar, using an instrument developed for studying perma-
frost melting along the Alaskan oil pipeline. To eliminate all background vibration, he
enlisted the services of an oxcart driver. The driver simply drove slowly and steadily
along a carefully marked straight line. The subsurface stratigraphy was recorded on
special paper and revealed strong reflectors, some of which turned out to be the clay
surfaces of hut floors covered by ash. Finally, Sheets used a resistivity survey meter
to measure the variations in the resistance (resistivity) of the ground, hoping to locate
stone walls or hard pavements. The three-dimensional software revealed interesting
double-peaked anomalies, which, when tested with a drill rig, turned out to be large
prehistoric structures A combination of geophysical methods provided an effective and
152 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There
economical way to locate subsurface features at Cerén – at a fraction of the cost that
would have been incurred in bulldozing away acres of ashy overburden.

Discovery
Remote Sensing at Stonehenge, England
The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project was billed as “the world’s biggest-ever virtual
excavation” when it was launched on July 5, 2010. Just two weeks into the three-year study,
the results had already exceeded all expectations with the discovery of the first major new
ceremonial monument found near Stonehenge in the last fifty years. But how did they do it?
Mounted behind quad-bikes and mini-tractors, the team has been using a state-of-
the-art magnetometer and geo-radar system that is capable of making and processing
millions of measurements and producing pin-sharp images in real time. Unlike the flat
two-dimensional images of conventional geophysics, the new system uses software devel-
oped for solid modeling and gaming, and can produce three-dimensional images of the
archaeology beneath the earth (Figure 6.10). This is streets ahead of current geophysical
technology, which generates results that – in terms of stratigraphy and phasing – are diffi-
cult to interpret without excavation.
The team used the new technology to map some 14 square kilometers (5.4 square miles)
of the Stonehenge landscape – a huge leap compared to the piecemeal areas that were

Figure 6.10 T
 ools of the trade used by the Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project, used to
produce three-dimensional images of what lies below the surface.
(Professor Vincent Gaffney, Bradford University, UK)
 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There 153

Figure 6.11 The henge-like monument with its large pits, perhaps holding wooden uprights,
and ditches revealed by cutting-edge geophysical survey.
(Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Remote Sensing and Visual Archaeology. www.archpro.
lbg.ac.at)

studied before; indeed prior to the project some 90 percent of the area around the main
henge remained terra incognita despite the fact that researchers were well aware that
Stonehenge lay within a rich ancient ‘ritual landscape’.
As the project progressed, led by the University of Birmingham and the Ludwig
Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology in Austria, the
landscape was indeed found to be teeming with archaeology. Remote-sensing techniques
and geophysical surveys detected hundreds of new features, including seventeen pre-
viously unknown ritual monuments dating to the period when Stonehenge achieved its
iconic shape. Dozens of burial mounds were also mapped in minute detail, among them
a long barrow (a burial mound dating to before Stonehenge) with evidence for a massive
timber building, thought to have been used for the ritual inhumation of the dead following
a complicated sequence of exposure and excarnation (defleshing), but that was finally
covered by an earthen mound.
As for the major discovery made back in July 2010, the new imaging system revealed
a “henge-like monument” lying just 900 meters (984 yards) northwest of the site’s iconic
stone circle (Figure 6.11). It comprises an oval-shaped segmented ditch, with two oppos-
ing entrances, and is associated with 22 pits, each about 1 meter (3 feet) across, which
could have held a free-standing timber structure. Interestingly, this new ‘henge’ is compar-
able to a similar monument, previously known to archaeologists, some 1.3 kilometers (0.8
mile) southeast of Stonehenge.
This unique project has not only revolutionized how archaeologists might use new tech-
nologies to interpret the past, but it has transformed how we understand Stonehenge and
its surrounding landscape. All of this information has now been placed within a single
digital map, which will guide how Stonehenge and its landscape are studied in the future.

Nonintrusive archaeological survey is the most vital of all field research. Without
adequate surveys and efforts at cultural resource management, the future of archae-
ology in some parts of the world, especially North America and western Europe, would
be in grave doubt. There simply would be nothing left to explore.
154 They Sought It Here, They Sought It There

SUMMARY
1. Archaeological fieldwork consists of finding, assessing, and excavating archaeo-
logical sites.
2. Many sites come to light by accident during construction work or other modern
activity or as a result of natural phenomena such as earthquakes.
3. Archaeological surveys locate and record sites within specific areas, using carefully
formulated research designs, remote-sensing techniques such as aerial photography
or even satellite imagery, and, above all, observation on foot on the ground.
4. Formal statistical sampling methods play an important role in survey work as a
basis for estimating the site resource base in a specific region. They provide a stat-
istically reliable basis of archaeological data for making generalizations about site
distributions.
5. Increasingly, archaeologists record sites with computer-aided mapping methods
known as geographic information systems (GIS). GIS lets the researcher manipulate
large amounts of data during complex analyses of ancient settlement patterns using
sites and environmental and topographic data.
6. Site assessment involves mapping, surface collection, and subsurface investigation
with electronic devices like ground-penetrating radar and resistivity meters. Such
approaches were highly successful at the Cerén Maya village in El Salvador, where
volcanic ash mantles an entire farming settlement.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. How does remote sensing contribute to archaeological survey?
2. What goes GIS contribute to archaeology?
3. Why is nonintrusive archaeology important, and what are its limitations?

FURTHER READING
Here we introduce a wonderful set of small paperbacks that summarize the process of archaeo-
logical research. Larry J. Zimmerman and William Green, Archaeologist’s Toolkit (Walnut Creek,
CA: AltaMira Press, 2003), is a set of seven short volumes that cover the essentials of doing
archaeology in the field and laboratory. Any serious student should buy the whole series.
Stephen L. Black and Kevin Jolly, Archaeology by Design, the first volume in the series, offers a
wonderful summary of the basics of research design. The second volume, James M. Collins and
Brian Leigh Molyneaux, Archaeological Survey, does the same for survey, with a strong emphasis
on nonintrusive methods.
Martin Carver’s Archaeological Investigation (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), is the best
introduction to archaeological fieldwork in the English language and covers research design,
survey, and excavation, among other things. Thomas Hester, Harry J. Shafer, and Kenneth L.
Feder, Field Methods in Archaeology, 7th edn. (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2008), con-
tains invaluable essays on aspects of survey and excavation, including stratigraphy and dat-
ing. Remote sensing: Irwin Scollar and others, Archaeological Prospecting and Remote Sensing
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009). H. D. G. Maschner, ed., New Methods, Old
Problems: Geographic Information Systems in Modern Archaeological Research (Carbondale: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1996), is a very useful volume on GIS. See also Lawrence B. Conyers
and Dean Goodman, Ground-Penetrating Radar: An Introduction for Archaeologists (Walnut Creek,
CA: AltaMira Press, 1997).
newgenprepdf

7 Excavation

CHAPT ER OU TL I N E
Planned Excavation: Research Design 156
Types of Excavation 161
Site Testing 162
The Process of Dissection 163
Vertical and Horizontal Excavation 165
Digging, Tools, and People 168
Recording 170
Stratigraphic Observation 170
Excavation Problems 173
Open Campsites and Villages 173
Caves and Rockshelters 173
Mound Sites 174
Earthworks and Forts 176
Shell Middens 177
Ceremonial and Other Specialist Sites 178
Burials and Cemeteries 180
Reburial and Repatriation 181
156 Excavation

Ancestral statues, moiae, on (Rapa Nui) Easter Island in the South Pacific.
(Anharris / Thinkstock by Getty Images)

PREVIEW
Excavation, once the primary activity of archaeologists, is now the strategy of last resort
because it destroys the archaeological record. Chapter 7 describes the process of arch-
aeological excavation, various approaches to site testing and investigation, and the
basics of recording and stratigraphic observation. We stress that there’s no such thing
as a standardized way of digging archaeological sites. Much of the chapter is devoted
to summaries of some of the major challenges faced by excavators. We also discuss the
ethical issues surrounding the excavation of human burials.
We all have dreams of digging into a mysterious, undisturbed tomb. Suddenly, you
come across a sealed door. You break down the door and find yourself in an undis-
turbed, gold-strewn sepulcher that puts Tutankhamun’s burial chamber to shame. But
in reality, modern archaeological excavation is a precise, slow-moving process, working
with trowels and brushes, often without a spectacular find, from one day to the next.
In this chapter we describe some of the basic principles of excavation and many exca-
vation problems that archaeologists can encounter in the field. Realize, though, that
each site presents distinctive challenges and requires modification of the basic princi-
ples enumerated here.

Planned Excavation: Research Design

Archaeological excavation is not digging by formula, but a carefully managed process
that requires constant creative thinking. There are general methodologies for excavation,
 Excavation 157
but the appropriate one varies from site to site and from moment to moment as an exca-
vation proceeds. In a way, excavation is a process of negotiation that balances acquiring
the maximum amount of information against potential destruction and the needs of
contemporary society. All excavations, whether of a tiny hunter-gatherer campsite, a
deep cave visited sporadically for thousands of years, a farming village, a city mound,
or a shipwreck, require careful planning, which culminates in the research design. A dig
can take you to intensely hot African valleys, to sacrificial burials high in the Andes,
or deep into tropical rain forests. Some people spend their entire careers excavating in
urban settings, deep under the modern streets of London, New York, or Mexico City.
Excavation is, as the British archaeologist Martin Carver remarks, “the greatest fun
imaginable – exciting, companionable, poetic, like a theatre group, there for each other
whether the run is to be long or short” (Carver, 2009: 115). How right he is! A well-run
excavation is truly a unique intellectual and social experience.
The first principle of excavation is that digging is destructive. As archaeologist Kent
Flannery once remarked, we are the only scientists who murder their informants (our
sites) when we question them! The archaeological deposits so carefully examined dur-
ing a dig are destroyed forever. Site contents are removed to a laboratory, permanently
divorced from their context in time and space in the ground. And this is a radical diffe-
rence from other disciplines: A chemist can readily re-create the conditions of a basic
experiment, a biographer can return to the archives to reevaluate the complex events in
a politician’s life, but an archaeologist’s archives are destroyed during the dig. All that
remains from an excavation are the finds from the trenches, the unexcavated portions of
the site, and the photographs, notes, and drawings that record the excavator’s observa-
tions for posterity. One of the tragedies of archaeology is that much of the available arch-
aeological data have been excavated under far from scientific conditions. Our archives of
information are uneven at best. Increasingly, the ethics of archaeological research require
absolutely minimal excavation consistent with acquiring essential scientific information.

Discovery
The Princess of Khok Phanom Di, Thailand, 1984
Charles Higham of the University of Otago in New Zealand is one of the world’s experts
on the archaeology of Southeastern Asia. Working closely with Thai archaeologists, he has
made spectacular discoveries of early rice-farming villages and well-established Bronze
Age settlements. In 1984, he began excavations at the large Khok Phanom Di mound on
the floodplain of the Bang Pakong River. From a previous test excavation carried out by a
Thai colleague, he knew that the occupation deposits were nearly 30 feet (9 meters) deep,
the mound resting on layers of shell midden debris. In the trial pit, Higham spotted “the
hollow eye sockets of some prehistoric person,” so he knew he would probably find burials
(see Figure 7.1).
After digging through the uppermost levels, he found lighter, sandier soil about 3 feet
(1 meter) below the surface. He cleaned the surface of the deposit carefully and spot-
ted the telltale outline of the dark filling of a grave. Soon the excavators uncovered a row
of graves close to the foundation of a raised platform with a building on it. Their trowels
traced the walls of beautifully polished black vessels, many of them decorated with curvi-
linear designs. Higham’s excitement mounted as he uncovered fourteen burials. From the
platform, “I could look down the row of skeletons and see the remains of men, women,
and children, and even a tiny grave with the intertwined bones of two newly born infants,
probably twins. It looked like a family group running through a couple or more generations”
(Higham, 1994: 283).
158 Excavation
The excavation penetrated downward into a large burial chamber, uncovering a pyra-
mid of clay cylinders once destined to become pots. When the pyramid was removed, the
skeleton of a woman in her mid-thirties appeared, her wrist muscles well formed, probably
from kneading clay. She had borne one or two children. Her chest was covered with tiny
shell beads and a necklace of large, white, I-shaped beads. Higham lifted the top half of the
body in a single block of soil and dissected it in the laboratory, where he recovered no less
than 120,787 shell beads, once sewn on to two ornate upper garments. The princess must
have shimmered in the sunlight, her wealth and social position coming from her expertise
at potmaking, evidenced by the burnished polishing pebbles found by her feet and the bro-
ken vessels covering her legs. Just 6 feet (2 meters) away, Higham found another, identical
grave covered by another heap of clay cylinders; this was the grave of an infant only fifteen
months old. The child was adorned with the same decoration as her mother and lay with a
tiny potmaking anvil, a smaller version of the anvils used by adults, by her side. Higham is
convinced that this was the princess’s daughter.
By the time the excavation finished six months later, Higham had recovered another
139 burials, representing seventeen to twenty generations of expert potters who had
traded pots to obtain exotic shell ornaments. But none of them rivaled the splendor of the
Princess of Khok Phanom Di.

The treasure hunter ravages a site in search of valuable finds and keeps no records.
Archaeologists demolish sites as well, but with a difference: They create archives of
archaeological information that document contexts for the objects they take back to the
laboratory with them. Although they have destroyed the site forever, they have created
a data bank of information in its place, the only archive their successors will be able
to consult to check their results. Archaeologists have serious responsibilities: to record
and interpret the significance of the layers, houses, food remains, and artifacts in their
sites and to publish the results for posterity. Without accurate records and meaningful

Figure 7.1 E
 xcavation at Khok Phanom Di, Thailand. The site yielded not only spectacular burials
but important evidence for early rice cultivation.
(Charles Higham)
 Excavation 159
publication of results, an excavation is useless. Many CRM investigations in North
America are now funded under contracts that require prompt reporting, even if only
for limited circulation.
A couple of generations ago, an archaeologist’s first inclination was to dig sites to
solve problems. Nowadays, there is increased awareness that excavation destroys irre-
placeable evidence of the past, and we dig only when we must. Anyone who excavates
without serious attention to record keeping and all of the other processes of excavation
is committing vandalism of an unforgivable kind.
At the core of every modern archaeological excavation lies a sound research design,
a design that very often has a regional rather than a specific site focus (see Chapter 6).
The research design is developed to answer specific questions and to acquire max-
imum information with minimum disturbance of finite archaeological resources. It is,
of course, a flexible, ever-changing plan, modified as hypotheses are tested, proved
wrong, validated, or refined as a result of knowledge acquired in the ongoing exca-
vation. When the National Park Service decided to excavate and stabilize Mound A,
a 1,000-year-old Mississippian earthwork once surrounded by a wooden palisade in
the Shiloh Mound Complex on the Tennessee River, the excavator, David Anderson, had
to balance investigation of the mound and its complex internal structure, revealed
by remote sensing, with the need to protect it against the encroaching Tennessee
River, which was eroding the archaeological deposits. The research design included
a program of dispersed test pits and the excavation of a 2-meter- (6.5-foot-) wide step
trench into two sides and across the top of the mound (see Figure 7.2). At the same
time, a stabilizing program was put into place, which made assumptions about the
amount of loss to be expected over the next half century. The research design, which
involved the work of scientists from a wide array of disciplines, posed a number of
specific questions to be investigated, most of them revolving around the construc-
tion of Mound A as well as information on the cultural changes, including possibly
maize agriculture, that took place over the site’s history. Finally, the plan outlined
the stages of fieldwork to be undertaken, as well as access and safety measures to be
implemented. Plans were also laid for consultations with the local Chickasaw Nation
as excavation proceeded.
Good research designs extend beyond the excavation itself. The end products of
even a month’s excavation on a moderately productive site are boxes upon boxes of
potsherds, stone tools, animal bones, and other finds that have been cleaned, sorted,
and bagged in the field. Rolls of drawings and stacks of computer disks hold valuable
stratigraphic information. So do digital images, photographs, and hundreds of pages
of field notes compiled by excavation staff as the long days of toil continue. At the same
time, radiocarbon and soil samples are collected for later analysis. Freshwater shells
and charcoal fragments are packed for shipment to specialist investigators. It takes
months to analyze the notes and finds from even a small excavation. The dozens of
boxes, hundreds of notebook pages, and megabytes of computer input contain a vast
array of data that must be collated to reconstruct what happened at the site. Laboratory
work arising from the Shiloh excavation consumed years of hard work. It follows, then,
that the excavation research design is constantly reevaluated to determine the future
course of the dig and to monitor the long months of analysis and interpretation that
follow. The days when a site was dug simply because it “looked good” are long gone.
The organization of even a moderate-sized excavation requires careful planning at the
implementation stage of the research design. One classic example of such planning back
in the 1970s comes from the Midwest. Illinois archaeologists James Brown and Stuart
Struever spent many field seasons excavating the Koster site in the lower Illinois River
160 Excavation

Figure 7.2 Excavations at Mound A, Shiloh Mound Complex, Tennessee.

(National Park Service, Southeastern Region)

Valley. Here, at least twelve human occupations are represented at one site, the earliest
of which dates to before 5100 b.c. Koster is a deep site, probably abandoned before a.d.
1000 after generations of Indians had settled at this favorable locality. It offered Brown
and Struever a unique opportunity to examine the changing cultures of the inhabitants
over more than 6,000 years. But the organizational problems were enormous. Koster is
more than 30 feet (9 meters) deep, with each of the twelve cultural horizons separated
from its neighbor by zones of sterile soil. Brown and Struever were fortunate in that they
were able to treat each occupation level of this large site as an entirely separate digging
operation.
The archaeologists had two options. One was to dig small test trenches and obtain
samples of pottery and other finds from each stratigraphic level. But this approach,
although cheaper and commonly used, was inadequate for the problems to be investi-
gated at the Koster site. The excavators were interested in studying the origins of agri-
culture in the lower Illinois Valley. Brown and Struever therefore decided to excavate
each living surface on a sufficiently large scale to study the activities that had taken
place there. This procedure would enable them to examine minute economic changes.
Thus the emphasis in the Koster excavations was on isolating the different settlement
types that lay one on top of the other.
In developing the Koster research design, Brown and Struever needed to control a
mass of complex variables that affected their data. In order to acquire immediate feed-
back on the finds made during the excavations, they organized a data-processing system
 Excavation 161

Figure 7.3 Flow chart of the organization of an archaeological excavation.

that was elaborate for its day, sorting the animal bones, artifacts, vegetable remains,
and other discoveries on location in the field. The tabulated information on each sorted
find was then fed by remote access terminal to a computer many miles away. The exca-
vators had instant access to the latest data from the dig. This system meant that the
overall research design could be modified while an excavation was still in progress (see
Figure 7.3).
The Koster site, although conducted a quarter century ago, is a classic example of
academic research and elaborate research design that used complex computer technol-
ogy. The dig employed dozens of people each field season. Most excavations, whether
academic or CRM, operate on a far smaller scale, but the ultimate principles are the
same: sound research design, very careful recording of all data, and scientifically con-
trolled excavation. The Koster excavation was designed, like all good digs, to solve spe-
cific research problems formulated in the context of a sound research design.
In the final analysis, archaeological excavation is dissection: dissection of each layer
of a site to understand how it was formed and what happened there in the past. This is
a three-dimensional process where the excavator dissects the deposit, then turns it into
a meticulous set of records, set down in writing or digitally, drawn, and photographed.
Martin Carver, already quoted, who is famous for his spotless excavations, considers
them laboratories for a surgical activity – and he is right.

Types of Excavation
People commonly ask the same questions when they visit an excavation. How do you
decide where to dig? What tools do you use? Why are your trenches in this configur-
ation? How deep do you excavate? Every site differs in its complexity and special prob-
lems, but here are some general principles.
You can decide where to dig on a site by the simple, arbitrary choice of a spot that
has yielded a large number of surface finds or one where traces of stone walls or other
ancient structures can be seen above ground. When Richard Daugherty dug the Ozette
whale-hunting site on the Washington coast (see Chapter 9, p. 224), he began by dig-
ging through the place where the largest occupation sequence seemed to be. Why? He
needed to obtain as complete a cultural sequence as possible. The logical way to do
so was to dig through the deepest part of the site. There was, of course, no guarantee
that his trench would penetrate to the earliest part of the whale-hunters’ site. But his
choice was a practical way to start attacking the fundamental questions of when and
162 Excavation

Figure 7.4 A
 line of test pits at Quirigua, Guatemala, a Maya ceremonial center, laid out at 49.2-foot
(15-meter) intervals and aligned with the site grid.
(University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia)

for how long the whale hunters lived at Ozette. Similar decisions have been made at
thousands of other sites all over the world.

Site Testing
In these days of subsurface radar technology and sophisticated geomorphological
studies, site testing has become more sophisticated than it was even a few years ago.
However, a number of testing approaches amplify such data or are used as stand-alone
ways of deciding whether a site is worth further investigation or to establish its date,
function, or type of occupation. Such methods are especially important on CRM projects
where time is short and extensive areas have to be surveyed and test-excavated.
Augurs and other forms of borers can be used to explore archaeological deposits –
especially hydraulic corers, which provide column samples of subsurface layers and
allow one to follow conspicuous or distinctive strata over considerable distances, even
if they are buried far beneath the surface.
However, the test pit remains the most useful way of obtaining preliminary infor-
mation on stratigraphy and culture history in advance of larger-scale excavation. Some
test trenches are small control pits, dug carefully as a way of anticipating subsurface
stratigraphy and occupation layers. Such excavations are reference points for plan-
ning an entire dig. More often, test pits are laid out in lines and over considerable dis-
tances to establish the extent of a site and the basic stratigraphy in different areas (see
Figure 7.4). Sometimes their locations are selected by statistical means, other times on
the basis of surface finds or exposed features. Kent Flannery once called such trenches
 Excavation 163
“telephone booths,” an apt description of small cuttings placed to acquire highly spe-
cific information.
Shovel pits are a variation on the test pit theme, usually used in surface survey to
trace occupation deposits. They are little more than small holes dug with a shovel a
few inches below the surface and are much used to establish the boundaries of shallow
settlement sites and features.

The Process of Dissection

How do you dissect a stratified archaeological site? Obviously, there is no one stand-
ardized way of excavating them, for they vary infinitely in their size, preservation con-
ditions, and complexity. Some of the most complex excavations are even conducted
underground, such as those in London deep under high-rise buildings and in subway
stations (see Figure 7.5).
There are, however, some widely used dissection methods:

Geometric Method. Here, the excavator lays out a rectangular trench, then levels the
surface within before taking the deposits down in thin spits, or arbitrary layers, up
to 4 inches (10 centimeters) thick. As the excavation proceeds, the exposed walls
display the stratigraphic profile. The horizontal surface consists of the same layers
truncated and seen from the top. By recording both sets of layers, the researcher
obtains a three-dimensional picture of the entire deposit from top to bottom. This is

Figure 7.5 E
 xcavations under a high-rise building in the heart of the city of London show the com-
plexities of modern urban archaeology.
(Museum of London, Archaeology)
164 Excavation
an efficient way of excavating and recording a site, but it has the disadvantage that
one never looks at the layers for what they actually are – the record can be called
somewhat inhuman in terms of recording ancient human behavior. BF used this
method extensively to excavate mounded farming villages, where the stratigraphic
layers are very hard to see and where he was working with unskilled workers.
Sampling. In these days of high digging costs and CRM projects, archaeologists rely
more heavily on statistical sampling than their predecessors did. Sampling is used
in digging shell heaps or dense accumulations of occupation debris containing
thousands of artifacts. Obviously, only a small sample of a large garbage heap can
be dug and analyzed. To ensure validity of the statistical samples, some form of
unbiased sampling must be used to choose which part of a site is to be dug.

Sampling is the science of controlling and measuring the reliability of information

through the theory of probability. Sampling techniques allow us to ensure a statistically
reliable basis of archaeological data from which we can make generalizations about
our research data. Most archaeologists make use of probabilistic sampling, a means of
relating small samples of data in mathematical ways to much larger populations. The
classic example of this technique, commonly used in the disciplines of statistics and stat-
istical theory, is the political opinion poll, testing national feelings from tiny samples,
perhaps as few as 1,500 people. In archaeology, probabilistic sampling improves the
likelihood that the conclusions reached from a survey or excavation on the basis of the
samples are relatively reliable.
The use of formal sampling techniques in archaeology is still in an early stage. Simple
random sampling is used when nothing is known ahead of excavation. It can be used,
for example, when an archaeologist wishes to obtain an unbiased sample of artifacts
from an ancient shell mound. One can arrive at this result by laying out a rectangular
grid of squares on a site and then selecting the squares to be dug by using a table of
random numbers. The excavated samples are thus chosen at random rather than on the
basis of surface finds or other considerations.
Stratified sampling, whereby the investigator uses previous knowledge of an area,
such as its topographic variation, to structure further research, enables one to sample
some selected units intensively and others less thoroughly.
Sampling excavation is a variant on the geometric method, which gives multiple
views of the stratigraphic sequence at different points. The great British excavator Sir
Mortimer Wheeler put his boxes in shallow sites in formal grids covering a consider-
able area, allowing him to monitor the stratified layers in the “baulks” between the
boxes. Once excavation and recording was complete, he would then remove the baulks,
knowing that he had tight control over the stratigraphy (Figure 7.6). North American
excavators commonly use random sampling to place their boxes, expanding them, join-
ing them, or linking them if this is judged necessary. This approach has the advantage
of being quicker and providing a quick impression of a site. It is most successful with
relatively homogeneous sites like shell middens, but has the disadvantage that different
activities take place at different locations within a site and you may miss some of them.
Stratigraphic excavation is the hardest form of dissection, for it involves exposing
each layer, one by one, and as they lie in the ground. If you have well-colored, sharp lay-
ers, stratigraphic excavation – while challenging – is relatively straightforward. If the lay-
ers have decayed or are less well defined, then difficulties proliferate. With stratigraphic
excavation, you record as you go along, following a sequence of defining the layer, which
can be a feature, a posthole or an occupation horizon, then recording, removing, and
recording it again, perhaps in a broader context of other features exposed nearby.
 Excavation 165

Figure 7.6 M
 ortimer Wheeler-style excavation using baulks and boxes at the Jinhsa site near
Chengdu, China, c. 1000 b . c . (Excavation displayed in the site museum.)
(Best View Stock / Alamy)

Stratigraphic excavation is notoriously difficult in caves and rockshelters visited

repeatedly over long periods of time. Almost invariably, you are working in a restricted
space, which means your trenches will be vertical cuts into the stratified deposits. In
many places where stratigraphic excavation is the norm, researchers tend to expose
large, continuous areas – horizontal excavations – that expose large numbers of indi-
vidually recorded components. The advantage is that you expose the entire area of a
single deposit, like the central precincts of a small farming village, but this approach
places heavy responsibility on those who record individual features. It is hard, too, to
obtain an overall check on the stratigraphy.

Vertical and Horizontal Excavation

Many people make a somewhat arbitrary distinction between vertical and horizontal
(area) excavation.

Vertical Excavation
Some of the world’s most important sites have been excavated on a small scale by ver-
tical excavation, digging limited areas for specific information on dating and stratig-
raphy. Vertical trenches can be used to obtain artifact samples, to establish sequences of
ancient building construction or histories of complex earthworks, and to salvage sites
threatened with destruction. Vertical excavation comes into its own in small sites such
166 Excavation
as caves and rockshelters, where space is limited and the excavators have to cope with
hidden boulders from ancient rock falls and other such obstructions. Sometimes the
deposits spill out from the cave itself to the steep slope in front of the site, necessitat-
ing the use of a long, stepped vertical cutting, as was the case at the Klasies River Cave
in South Africa, which records some of the earliest activities of Homo sapiens in tropical
Africa.
Dust Cave lies in a limestone bluff on the middle Tennessee River in northwestern
Alabama. Extensive early hunter-gatherer occupations, dating between about 8000 and
1600 b.c., reach a depth of 16.4 feet (5 meters). Excellent conditions preserved animal
bones and plant materials, as well as such features as hearths, pits, and clay floors.
Archaeologists from the University of Alabama sunk 6.5-foot by 6.5-foot (2-meter by
2-meter) test pits into the cave floor. When they located stone artifacts, they excavated
a large 6.5-foot by 39-foot (2-meter by 12-meter) cutting down to sterile bedrock. The
excavators dug the cave using the stratified layers of human occupation as their guide,
each being dissected meticulously. All the occupation deposits passed through ¼-inch
(6-millimeter) mesh screen, while large samples were processed through water to obtain
seeds and other minute plant remains, a technique known as flotation (see Chapter 11).
They identified the different human occupation stages by using highly diagnostic stone
projectile points that changed significantly over time. We return to this important exca-
vation in Chapter 11.
Vertical excavation is also important when investigating the banks and ditches of
such sites as Roman forts or Iron Age encampments like Maiden Castle in England, and is
widely used when investigating Adena and Hopewell burial mounds in North America
(Figure 7.7).

Horizontal Excavation
Horizontal, or area, digs are commonly associated with stratigraphic excavation, expos-
ing large areas of a site to uncover house plans or settlement layouts. As a general rule,
the only sites that are completely excavated are very small hunter-gatherer camps, iso-
lated structures, and burial mounds. With larger settlements, all one can do is excavate
several portions of the site in order to sample areas representative of the entire settle-
ment. Again, modern archaeological ethics require minimal horizontal excavation con-
sistent with the carefully controlled objectives of the investigation.
Horizontal excavation is highly effective with small hunter-gatherer sites, such as the
artifact-and-bone scatters at Olduvai Gorge and other early human sites in East Africa,
where the position of every stone flake and animal bone is recorded in place. Such an
approach also works well with complex structures like Iroquois longhouses, which sur-
vive as complexes of decayed wooden postholes buried under a few inches of topsoil
(see Figure 7.8). Such structures were often expanded, rebuilt, or sited on top of another
structure, resulting in a jigsaw puzzle of posthole patterns that can be deciphered only
with a large area excavation.
An excellent example of horizontal excavation exposed the Grewe site, a Hohokam
farming village in the modern-day Phoenix area (Figure 7.9). Here the excavators
exposed about two dozen courtyard groups, complexes of semi-subterranean pithouses
that shared central courtyards and food roasting pits. The groups in turn surrounded a
large central plaza. The largest courtyard group contained twenty-six houses and cov-
ered more than 6,500 square feet (604 square meters). Careful excavation revealed that
only a few houses in each group were occupied at one time, most of the households
comprising no more than about ten people. Furthermore, the courtyard groups were
 Excavation 167

Figure 7.7 V
 ertical excavation on a British Iron Age hill fort and its fortifications in 1937: a classic
example of Sir Mortimer Wheeler’s meticulous excavation methods, which were the
foundation of modern excavation methods in Europe. This famous picture of an exem-
plary vertical trench has set standards for generations.
(Society of Antiquaries of London)

occupied for varied lengths of time, some for centuries, others for a few generations.
This may show that ownership of houses and compounds passed from one generation
to the next, sometimes over long periods of time.
Large, open area excavations require accurate recording over considerable distances,
made much easier when the position of houses and finds can be recorded with a total
data station, an electronic distance-measuring device with recording computer, which
records data that can be downloaded to laptop computers at the end of the day’s work.
Any form of horizontal excavation is expensive, even if earthmoving machinery is
used to remove sterile overburden, but it provides a unique, overall, horizontal view
of human occupation or of entire human settlements obtainable in no other way (see
Chapter 14 opener).
The arbitrary subdivision between vertical and horizontal excavation has some merit
and is commonly used. However, it disguises a much more flexible reality. What mat-
ters is to use the appropriate methods for the site and problem at hand. Excavating a
site with ill-defined layers, or the backfilling of a ditch or large burial pit, may be best
168 Excavation

Figure 7.8 A
 reconstruction of an Iroquois longhouse from Ontario, Canada. The Iroquois Nations
dominated much of the North American Northeast in the centuries before Europeans
arrived. Many settlements comprised close groupings of fortified longhouses.
(Stock Montage, Inc. / Alamy)

achieved by the geometric methods. Stratigraphic excavation works best for sites with
easily distinguishable layers. What matters is establishing how things actually were in
the past. As Martin Carver remarks, “An archaeological deposit is a three-dimensional
artifact, only seen once and never seen whole. It deserves an analytical approach that
is special to itself, not just to be dissected and recorded, but to be studied” (Carver,
2009: 123). A good excavation is as creative an activity as writing a book – and is
redesigned every time you put a spade into the ground.

Digging, Tools, and People

How do you do the digging? Much depends on the type of site you are excavating.
A huge burial mound on the Ohio River may be more than 20 feet (6 meters) deep. Much
of the sterile deposit covering the burial levels is removed with earthmoving machinery
and picks and shovels. Earthmoving machinery in particular is now widely used on
CRM excavations such as at the Grewe site to save time, where its use has been brought
to a fine art, involving minimal destruction (see Figure 7.9). But as soon as the archaeolo-
gists reach layers in which finds are expected, they dig with meticulous care, removing
each layer in turn, recording the exact position of their finds upon discovery. Smaller
caves or cemeteries are excavated centimeter by centimeter. The earth surrounding the
finds is passed through fine screens so that tiny beads, fish bones, and myriad small
items can be found.
Excavation is in part a recording process, and accuracy is essential. The records will
never be precise unless the dig is kept tidy at all times. The trench walls must always be
 Excavation 169

Figure 7.9 Pithouses and courtyard groups exposed by area excavation at the Grewe site, Arizona.
(Arizona Department of Transportation and Northland Research / Douglas Craig)

straight. Why? So you can record the layers you are digging and follow them across the
site. Surplus soil is dumped well away from the trenches so it does not cascade into the
dig or have to be shifted when new areas are opened. The excavation is a laboratory and
should be treated as such.
All archaeological digs are headed by a director, who is responsible both for organiz-
ing the excavation and for overseeing the specialists and diggers. Many larger academic
and CRM digs involve a team of specialist experts who work alongside the excavators.
When digging the famous Late Bronze Age site of about 1100 b.c. at Flag Fen in eastern
England, archaeologist Francis Pryor worked with a timber expert, a paleontologist,
soil scientists, experts on ancient metallurgy and mammal bones, and even a special-
ist in prehistoric beetles. The only way to study this complex site was to develop a
team approach that looked at the site in a broad environmental setting. A really large
excavation in Mesopotamia or Mesoamerica can involve dozens of people – specialist
archaeologists, a team of resident experts in other fields including an architect, graduate
student trainees, and volunteer or paid workers who do much of the actual excavation.
CRM projects involve closely knit teams of professional excavators and specialists who
ensure compliance and proper recovery and interpretation of data.
In Chapter 15, we describe some of the ways in which you can obtain digging
experience.
170 Excavation
The traditional symbols of the archaeologist at work are the shovel and the
triangular-bladed bricklayer’s trowel. In fact, archaeologists use many other digging
tools in their work. Earthmoving machinery, once despised, has become a necessity
in these days of high costs and quick-moving CRM excavation driven by contractors’
deadlines. In the hands of an expert operator, a front loader, bulldozer, or backhoe with
toothless bucket are remarkably delicate implements for removing sterile soil and sur-
prisingly thin slivers of overburden. On occasion, earthmoving equipment has been
used to excavate sites doomed in the face of road construction. The right piece of equip-
ment is capable of removing even thin arbitrary levels of a site with soft deposits, which
are then passed through screens to recover the artifacts in them. Meanwhile, the archae-
ologists focus on hand excavation of important features.
Despite widespread use of mechanical earthmovers, most excavation still proceeds
by hand. Picks, shovels, and long-handled spades carry the brunt of the heavy work.
But the most common archaeological tool used in North America is the diamond-shaped
trowel with straight edges and a sharp tip. With it, soil can be eased from a delicate spe-
cimen or an unusual discoloration in the soil can be scraped clean. Trowels are used for
tracing delicate layers in walls, clearing small pits, and other exacting jobs. They are
rarely out of the digger’s hand.
Household brushes and paintbrushes often come in handy, the former for soft, dry
sediments and for cleaning trenches, and the latter for freeing fragile objects from the
soil. Even fine artists’ brushes have their uses – cleaning beads, decaying ironwork, or
fine bones. Enterprising archaeologists visit their dentists regularly, if only to obtain
regular supplies of worn-out dental instruments, which make first-rate fine-digging
tools! And so do 6-inch (15-centimeter) nails ground to different shapes. A set of fine
screens for sifting soil for small finds, several notebooks and graph paper, tapes, plumb
bobs, surveyors’ levels, and a compass are just a few of the items that archaeologists
need to record their excavations and process their finds. Increasingly, laptop computers,
iPads, portable GPS units, electronic recording equipment, and smartphones are part
of the archaeologist’s field kit because they provide fast, accurate ways of recording
features, finds, and stratigraphy.

Recording
No dig is worth more than its records. Excavation notebooks provide a day-to-day
record of each trench, of new layers and significant finds. Before any trench is measured
out, the entire site is laid out on a grid of squares. Important finds, or details of a house
or a storage pit, are measured on the site plan by simple three-dimensional measuring
techniques or with an electronic recording instrument (see Figure 7.10a and b). It is
information from your records, as well as the artifacts from the dig, that form the price-
less archive of your excavation. If the records are incomplete, the dig is little better than
a treasure hunt.

Stratigraphic Observation
The laws of superposition and association lie at the very core of archaeology, for they pro-
vide the context of archaeological finds in time and space. The layers of archaeological
sites, be they natural or humanly created, form much more quickly than geological levels,
but they are subject to the same law of superposition. Thus the excavated stratigraphic
 Excavation 171

A B C D E F G
1
Datum post

2 Trench 1

4 Trench 2

5
Base grid
a posts

Measuring square Grid posts

(held horizontally)

Find in trench

Vertical measurement obtained by plumb bob

and string hung above objects.

Grid posts

90°
angle

Measuring
square (held
Vertical measurement
horizontally)
taken from this arm
with plumb bob held
over object

Trench

Horizontal measurement
taken from this arm
(distance from grid
post line) b

Figure 7.10 R
 ecording under ideal (grossly simplified) conditions. (a) Two trenches laid out with
a grid. (b) The principle of three-dimensional recording using carefully set grid posts.
Today, excavators usually use electronic recording systems, but the underlying prin-
ciples are the same.

profiles through an archaeological site represent a sequence of layers that have formed
through time. Stratigraphic observation is the process of recording, studying, and evalu-
ating stratified layers in archaeological sites, layers that were deposited horizontally but
are studied in the vertical (time) dimension.
Stratigraphic observation involves not only recording the layers but also confirming
that they do, in fact, represent a sequence in time. Many factors can disturb stratified
layers. For instance, rabbits can burrow through soft earth, or later occupants of a house
may dig into underlying layers to construct storage pits, build foundations, or even
172 Excavation

Figure 7.11 D
 ating the construction and the destruction of a building at Colonial Williamsburg,
Virginia, by its associated artifacts. Judging from the coin of a.d. 1723, the builder’s
trench for the stone wall was dug no earlier than 1723, and the building fell into ruin
before 1820.

bury the dead. This is where the law of association comes in, for the artifacts associ-
ated with stratified, undisturbed archaeological layers can then be placed in a relative
chronology, and, if radiocarbon samples are dated from one or more layers, perhaps in
an absolute one as well (see Figure 7.11). Thus, accurate stratigraphic observation is the
cornerstone of all excavation, for it provides the context for the studies of artifacts and
human behavior that are the central goals of all excavation.
Reading a stratigraphic profile is an art, for you have not only to record the layers
but to interpret them as well, taking account of the natural formation processes as well
as of human activities. This means watching for the subtle color changes resulting from
the decay of adobe brick on pueblo sites; the thin lines of hearths used for a short time,
whose edges have spilled down a slight slope; and the loosely packed outline of a rabbit
burrow used and abandoned many centuries ago. Often the changes are so subtle that
they appear only as a slight color change or a minute difference in the texture of the soil.
Only patience produces an accurate interpretation of a stratigraphic profile – looking
at the trench wall in different lights, at dawn or in the oblique light of evening, wetting
down dry strata with a fine water spray, even looking at the wall from below. All these
tricks and many others help you interpret complex stratigraphic jigsaw puzzles, even
on small sites.
Let us now turn from general principles to some specific excavation problems that
will give you an insight into the multitude of challenges awaiting fieldworkers. As we
 Excavation 173
indicated in Chapter 3, archaeological sites, in all shapes and sizes, are the basis for all
field investigations. All contain traces of human activity in the form of artifacts, struc-
tures, and food remains. Archaeologists most commonly classify sites by their func-
tions – that is to say, by the activities that took place within them. It is no coincidence
that these various site categories present different excavation problems.

Excavation Problems
Open Campsites and Villages
Small sites, often little more than scatters of artifacts that were once places where spe-
cific tasks were performed, are probably the most common archaeological sites. However,
the most obvious and most interesting locations are habitation sites, places where people
have lived and carried out many activities. Hunter-gatherers have occupied temporary
camps for short periods since the earliest millennia of prehistory. Where preservation con-
ditions are good, archaeologists can sometimes identify such settlements, represented by
concentrations of stone artifacts and broken animal bones, as well as the stone founda-
tions of long-abandoned brush shelters or the depressions of pithouses sunk partially into
the ground (see Figure 7.9 on p. 169). Such concentrations have been found in the Great
Basin of the American West, in the arctic North, and also in sub-Saharan Africa.
Many hunter-gatherer camps are hard to identify from the surviving archaeological
record (see Figure 7.12). The same is not true of later farming villages, which were usu-
ally occupied longer, resulting in the accumulation of considerable quantities of occupa-
tion debris as well as substantial house foundations. In about 9500 b.c., the inhabitants
of the Abu Hureyra village in Syria’s Euphrates Valley, one of the earliest farming vil-
lages in the world, dwelt in a tiny settlement of square, mud-brick houses with court-
yards, separated by narrow alleyways. The house foundations and numerous animal
bones, as well as other artifacts, enabled excavator Andrew Moore to trace the extent
and nature of the settlement. Iroquois farmers in the northeastern United States built
substantial wood-and-bark longhouses, which were occupied over several generations
and constantly modified (see Figure 7.8 on p. 168). The decayed postholes from the
walls provide an excellent record of Iroquois dwellings, often clustered in close juxta-
position in palisaded settlements.

Caves and Rockshelters

Cave people, complete with clubs, long hair, and brutish manners, are one of the popular
stereotypes of newspaper cartoonists. Caves and convenient rocky overhangs did indeed
serve as human dwellings from very early times but were by no means the only home
bases used by hunter-gatherers. The Late Ice Age people of southwestern France, famous
for their rock art, occupied great rockshelters and caves in the deep river valleys of the
Dordogne during the late Ice Age, between about 40,000 and 12,000 years ago. The Danger
and Hogup caves in Utah reflect thousands of years of hunter-gatherer occupation. The
dry environment of the desert preserved wooden objects and basketry as well as minute
details of economic life. And the dry caves of Tehuacán Valley in south-central Mexico
provide part of the history of how maize cultivation developed in the New World.
Cave and rockshelter excavations are some of the hardest digs to carry out success-
fully (see Figure 7.13). The ground below cliff overhangs usually consists of ash and
other debris piled up through successive human occupations. Sterile soils may interrupt
174 Excavation

Figure 7.12 E
 xcavations on a hominin site at Bouri in Ethiopia’s arid Afar Depression. The
2.5-million-year-old deposits at this site have yielded the world’s earliest evidence for
meat and marrow butchery with stone tools. A cranium of Australopithecus garhi was
found nearby. The excavation was conducted with meticulous care, using brushes and
small tools.
(David Brill, Atlanta)

this sequence of habitation, representing periods when the site was abandoned. As the
Dust Cave excavations show, digging such complicated sequences is slow and meticu-
lous work. The trenches are usually restricted by the size of the shelter. Each hearth and
small occupation layer has to be isolated from the others during excavation.
Many cave and rockshelter excavations deal purely with dating and stratigraphy,
but others are more ambitious. When Hallam Movius dug the Abri Pataud rockshelter
in southwestern France, he had to record at least six layers of human occupation dated
to between 40,000 and 19,000 years ago, extending through more than 20 feet (6 meters)
of stratified deposit. The site was excavated following a coordinated master plan that
involved not only archaeologists but botanists, geologists, and other specialists as well.
Movius was able to record minute changes in tool types as well as many details of the
changing hunting and gathering practices of Abri Pataud’s inhabitants.

Mound Sites
Occupation mounds (often called tells in Southwest Asia) are common in many parts
of the world. Mound sites result when the same site is occupied for centuries, even
 Excavation 175

Figure 7.13 A
 meticulous excavation in Klasies River Cave, South Africa. Stone Age hunters
visited the site for short periods over thousands of years, 100,000 years ago and later.
(Danita Delimont / Alamy)

thousands of years. Successive generations lived atop their predecessors’ settlements.

The result is a gradual accumulation of occupation debris, which, when excavated,
provides a complicated picture of occupation levels. Even a small mound can cost a
fortune to excavate, simply because the lowest levels are so deeply buried below the
surface. A huge mound such as that of Ur in Mesopotamia, or the city of Mohenjodaro
in Pakistan, can be sampled only by large trenches that cut into the sides of the mound
in a series of great steps, or by very large-scale excavation indeed, using a combination
of vertical and area trenches (see Figure 7.14).
There is far more to excavating an occupation mound than merely stripping off suc-
cessive layers. So many natural and artificial processes, ranging from wind erosion to
human activity, can change the stratigraphy of a site of this type that each presents a
challenging new excavation problem.
Burial mounds, as opposed to occupation mounds, come in many configurations,
ranging from conical tumuli to long communal sepulchers and elaborate tombs built
for Siberian chiefs. These mounds, such as those used by Bronze Age people in Britain
or the Hopewell folk of eastern North America, present complex excavation problems,
often requiring total excavation. In many cases, the mounds were built in stages or the
dead were buried in them at different times, long after the identity of the original occu-
pants was forgotten. A generation ago, such mounds were often excavated completely,
exposing the ancient land surface. Today, very carefully placed vertical trenches are
most commonly used, with excavation being used only to answer specific questions.
For example, at Easton Down near Avebury in England, archaeologist Alisdair Whittle
176 Excavation

Figure 7.14 T
 he complexities of excavating city mounds. Streets and houses at Mohenjodaro, with
the citadel in the background. A city of the Indus civilization, Pakistan, c. 1700 b.c.
(Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy)

excavated part of a communal burial mound to acquire pollen and mollusk samples that
showed the mound had been erected on open grassland.

Earthworks and Forts

Many peoples – Iron Age peasants in western Europe, Maori warriors in New Zealand,
Hopewell Indians in Ohio – built extensive earth fortifications to protect their settlements
and sacred places. The Ohio earthworks enclose large areas of ground, but no one knows
exactly why such earthworks were undertaken. To excavate them would require both
vertical excavation to record cross-sections across the earthworks and area investigation
to uncover the layout of the structures built inside the earthworks. Such excavations were
carried out on the great prehistoric fortress at Maiden Castle, England, many years ago.
The massive earthworks of Maiden Castle were stormed by a Roman legion in a.d. 43.
By careful excavation and use of historical data, the excavator Sir Mortimer Wheeler was
able to provide a blow-by-blow description of the battle for the fortress (see Figure 7.15).

For a space, confusion and massacre dominated the scene. Men and women, young
and old, were savagely cut down, before the legionaries were called to heel and
 Excavation 177

Figure 7.15 The Iron Age hill fort at Maiden Castle, southern England; its extensive earthworks
were originally excavated by Sir Mortimer Wheeler. More recent investigations have
modified some of his conclusions.
(Robert Harding Picture Library Ltd / Alamy)

the work of systematic destruction began … That night when the fires of the legion
shone out (we may imagine, in orderly lines across the valley), the survivors crept
forth from their broken stronghold, and in the darkness buried their dead.
(1943: 310)

More recent excavations have cast doubt on Wheeler’s reconstruction, but it does sug-
gest the potential for reconstructing past events from area excavations.

Shell Middens
Shell middens – vast accumulations of abandoned shells, fish bones, and other food
remains – are common in many coastal areas of the world such as California’s San
Francisco Bay and around Tokyo Bay in Japan. Remarkable results can be attained
by studying these dense heaps, especially in reconstructing prehistoric diets (see
178 Excavation

Figure 7.16 Australian Aboriginal shell mound, Tarkine coast, Tasmania.

(Rob Blakers / Getty Images)

Chapter 11). The excavation problem is twofold: first, to identify the stratified levels in
the middens, and second, to obtain statistically reliable samples of food remains and
artifacts from the deposits. Most shell midden digs use random sampling, described
very briefly earlier, which employs vertical trenches or test pits. Some midden excava-
tions unfold on a larger scale. The excavation of a shell midden is mostly rather unspec-
tacular, for the detailed statistical results come from laboratory analysis of artifacts
rather than from actual digging (Figure 17.16).

Ceremonial and Other Specialist Sites

Some of the world’s most famous archaeological sites are ceremonial centers, such as the
pyramids of Giza in Egypt or the Maya ceremonial center at Copán, Honduras. Many
ceremonial sites are enormous, and, like occupation mounds, present great difficulties
for the excavator. Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico is, of course, far more than a cere-
monial center (see Figure 7.17). It was also a great city, which flourished from 200 b.c.
to as late as a.d. 750. Discovering the true significance of the site has involved not only
extensive area excavation designed to help reconstruct pyramids and major buildings
but also sophisticated mapping and surface survey combined with small-scale excava-
tion. René Millon and other archaeologists have mapped more than 12.5 square miles
(20 square kilometers) of Teotihuacán in a survey program combined with excavation.
Years of fieldwork have shown that the founders of the great city laid it out on a grid
pattern that was followed for centuries. The Pyramids of the Sun and Moon were the
 Excavation 179

Figure 7.17 T eotihuacán, Mexico, looking down the Street of the Dead from the summit of the
Pyramid of the Moon, with the Pyramid of the Sun at left.
(Jiri Vatka / Thinkstock by Getty Images)

original focus of the city, until an unknown but charismatic leader built a palace com-
plex, marketplace, and temple to the feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl in the so-called
Cuidadela complex some distance away.
The Acropolis complex at Copán provided an extraordinary challenge to a team of
American and Honduran excavators (see Figure 3.7 on p. 71). Fortunately for science,
the Copán River had exposed the layers of the temple complex. The diggers were able to
tunnel into the center of the sacred buildings in an attempt to decipher the history of suc-
cessive temples built at the same sacred location. No less than 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) of
tunnels now burrow under the Acropolis. Tunneling offers a unique three-dimensional
view of a building’s history, aided in the case of Copán by deciphered Maya glyphs that
record the history of the city’s ruling dynasty. The excavators have managed to link
individual temples buried in the heart of the Acropolis to different rulers between about
a.d. 400 and 800.
Artifact patternings play a vital role in interpreting ceremonial centers, trading sites,
quarries, and other specialized sites. Do these patterns reflect long-distance trading
activity in, say, copper ornaments or seashells? Were marine stingray spines, which are
present in ruins appearing to be shrines built hundreds of miles inland from the Gulf
of Mexico, used for ritual bloodletting? Questions like these can be answered only by
careful studies of spatial associations.
180 Excavation

Figure 7.18 Involuntary burial. Earthquake victims at the Roman port of Kourion, Cyprus, killed
in a giant temblor in a . d. 265. The family died while sleeping, the child clasped in the
mother’s arms.
(Martha Cooper / National Geographic Creative)

Burials and Cemeteries

The golden mask of the pharaoh Tutankhamun, the refrigerated bodies of Siberian horse-
men and women from the Russian permafrost, desiccated mummies of humble folk
from northern Chile: Human burials are the stereotypic finds of archaeology, reflecting
humanity’s abiding concern with the afterlife. The world’s oldest known probable rit-
ual burial, an adolescent found in Qafzeh Cave, Israel, dates from around 100,000 years
ago, and most human societies have paid careful attention to funerals and burials ever
since. Burials have been deposited with simple or elaborate grave furniture designed to
accompany the owner to the afterlife. People have buried their dead in isolated, shal-
low graves within their settlement, under hut floors, in special cemeteries, in caves, as
cremated remains in jars, and in vast burial mounds. Some burials consist of the body
alone; others lie with a few beads or a handful of clay pots. Royal personages were often
buried in all their glory: Shang dynasty kings in China with their chariots; the rulers
of early Ur, Mesopotamia, with their entire court; Maya nobles with their prize treas-
ures; the Moche lords of Sipán in Peru in their full golden regalia. Sometimes, too, the
remains of victims of natural catastrophes like earthquakes lie under the ruins of their
houses (see Figure 7.18).
By studying a group of burials from one cemetery, it may be possible to distinguish
different social classes by the grave furniture buried with the remains. The common
people may take nothing with them; merchants or priests may be buried with distinctive
 Excavation 181
artifacts associated with their status in society. The Adena and Hopewell peoples of
North America were much concerned with the afterlife during their heyday 2,000 years
ago. From the distribution of the burials and cemeteries in their burial mounds, and
from the cult objects and ornaments associated with the skeletons, it may be possible
to gain some insights into the social organization of the Adena and Hopewell societies
(see Chapter 13). And, of course, burials are a fruitful source of information on personal
ornamentation and appearance, too, for people were (and still are) often buried in the
clothes and ornaments they wore in life. The physical characteristics of the skeletons
themselves can provide valuable data on age, nutrition, sex, disease, and medicine.
French archaeologists led by Françoise Dunand have excavated more than 700 skele-
tons from a cemetery at Duch, a remote Egyptian village in the Libyan Desert west of the
Nile River, occupied between 100 b.c. and a.d. 400. At least 5,000 people lived in the
village during its heyday. The inhabitants of this obscure settlement are better known
medically today than they were during their lifetimes. The excavators cleaned the skele-
tons in place, then X-rayed them with a portable machine hooked up to an onsite gener-
ator. They developed a clinical description of each body and took samples of hair, nails,
and skin before placing the skeletons in well-protected tombs. This field research pro-
vided an extraordinary portrait of the Duch people. They were of Mediterranean phys-
ical type, slender and between 5 feet 1 inch and 5 feet 4 inches (1.55 and 1.62 meters) tall.
They had pale skin and dark hair, like many ancient Egyptians, and an average life span
of about thirty-eight years if they survived infancy. Many of them suffered from osteo-
arthritis and scoliosis as a result of hard agricultural labor and carrying heavy loads.
More than two-thirds of the skeletons showed clear signs of having suffered from mal-
nutrition at some point in their lives. Human skeletons and mummies are the dispas-
sionate medical records of the past that reveal the consequences of years of inadequate
diet and backbreaking work.
How do you excavate a burial? Whether digging a large cemetery or a lone burial,
each skeleton and its associated grave, ornaments, and grave goods are considered a
single excavation problem. Each burial is exposed as a unit that has both internal associ-
ations with its accompanying goods and external associations with other burials in the
same and other levels. The first step is to identify the grave, either by locating a grave-
stone or a pile of stones, or from the grave outlines, which may appear as a discoloration
in the surrounding soil. Once the grave outlines have been found, individual bones are
exposed. The main outline of the burial is traced first. Then you uncover the fingers,
toes, and other small bones. You leave the bones in place and take care not to displace
any ornaments or grave furniture associated with them. Once the skeleton is exposed
and fully cleaned where it lies, the layout of the burial and grave furniture is recorded
by drawings and photographs before the skeleton is lifted bone by bone or encased in a
cocoon of plaster of Paris and metal strips (see Figure 7.18 on p. 180).

Reburial and Repatriation

Burial excavation may seem very romantic. In reality it is not only technically demand-
ing, but it raises important ethical questions as well. For years, archaeologists casually
dug up Indian burials and other prehistoric graves all over the world, some of them
even of people of known tribal or historical identity. Now both Australian Aborigines
and Native Americans, among others, are objecting strenuously to excavation and
destruction of ancient burial grounds – and with good reason. Why should their ances-
tors be dug up and displayed in museums, they argue? Many surviving communities
182 Excavation
retain strong emotional and religious ties with their ancestors, and excavation of their
remains flies in the face of their religious beliefs. There are now demands for reburial of
human remains stored in museums.
The Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990
establishes two main requirements. First, all federal agencies and museums receiv-
ing federal funds are required to inventory their holdings of Native American human
remains and associated funerary objects. They must also develop written summaries
for religious objects not found in graves, sacred artifacts, and what are called “objects of
cultural patrimony” that are in the collections they control. This inventorying process,
which will take years to complete, also requires that agencies and museums establish,
as well as they can, whether their individual holdings have cultural affiliation or, in
the case of skeletons, lineal descendants with living Native American groups. They are
required to notify the relevant Native American organization about the existence of the
materials and to offer to repatriate them.
The second requirement protects all Native American graves and other cultural
objects found within archaeological sites on federal and tribal land. This requirement
encourages the in situ preservation of archaeological sites, or at least those parts of them
that contain graves. It also requires anyone carrying out archaeological investigation
on federal and tribal lands to consult with affiliated or potentially affiliated Native
Americans concerning the treatment and disposition of any finds, whether made dur-
ing formal investigations or by accident.
NAGPRA is having a profound effect on the way in which American archaeologists
go about their business, for it mandates a level of consultation and concern for Native
American rights that is far greater than has been the norm in the United States. This is
quite apart from the scientific impact on the study of ancient Native American popu-
lations. The Native American Rights Fund estimates that as many as 600,000 Native
American human skeletons may be in museums, historical societies, universities, and
private collections. The signing of the 1990 Act came after years of controversy that pit-
ted, and still pits, Native Americans against scientists. The archaeologists and anthro-
pologists point out that revolutionary new research techniques are beginning to yield
a mine of new information about prehistoric North Americans. To rebury the database
for such research would deprive science, and future generations of Americans, of a vital
resource, they argue. Others, including some archaeologists, respond that this is an eth-
ical and moral issue, and such considerations should outweigh any potential scientific
gains. Native Americans feel deeply about repatriation for many complex reasons – if
nothing else because they are concerned about preserving old traditions and values as a
way of addressing current social ills.
Furious controversy sometimes surrounds newly discovered burials, like the case
of a 9,000-year-old skeleton unearthed at Kennewick, Washington, where local Native
American groups claimed ownership. This claim pitted them against the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers. The case ended up in litigation, with the courts finally allowing sci-
entific study of the bones.
There will be no quick resolution of the repatriation issue, however promptly and
sensitively archaeologists and their institutions respond to Native American concerns
and comply with the provisions of the 1990 Act. Only one thing is certain: No archaeolo-
gist in North America, and probably elsewhere, will be able to excavate a prehistoric or
historic burial without the most careful and sensitive preparation. This involves work-
ing closely with native peoples in ways that archaeologists have not imagined until
recently. Nothing but good can come of this.
 Excavation 183

SUMMARY
1. The process of archaeological research, including excavation, begins with the for-
mulation of a comprehensive research design.
2. The design is then implemented; data are acquired in the field through excavation
and then processed and analyzed in the laboratory.
3. Interpretation using anthropological and historical models is followed by final
publication.
4. The research design is developed to answer specific questions and to acquire
the maximum information with minimal disturbance of the finite archaeological
record.
5. Excavation itself is a meticulous process of recording both finds and their context in
time and space.
6. Vertical and test excavations are used to test and study stratigraphic sequences.
Horizontal excavations uncover large areas of a site – for example, an entire Iroquois
longhouse.
7. Stratigraphic recording is based on the principle of superposition, with care being
taken to distinguish natural and humanly caused disturbances, such as animal bur-
rows or garbage pits.
8. The chapter reviews the distinctive excavation problems associated with various
types of archaeological sites, among them habitations, caves and rockshelters, buri-
als, and shell middens.
9. Special problems surround human burials, which, in North America, are subject to
stringent regulations surrounding their reburial and repatriation.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What are the best uses for vertical and horizontal excavation?
2. Why is archaeological recording important?
3. How would you approach the excavation of a burial?

FURTHER READING
Again, a volume in the Archaeologist’s Toolkit is an admirable starting point: David L. Carmichael,
Robert H. Lafferty III, and Brian Leigh Molyneaux, Excavation, is vol. 4 in this important ser-
ies, with a strong conservation ethic and CRM orientation (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press,
2003). See also Martin Carver’s Archaeological Investigation, already cited for Chapter 6, and
Steve Roskams, Excavation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Thomas
Hester, Harry J. Shafer, and Kenneth L. Feder, Field Methods in Archaeology, 7th edn. (Walnut
Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2008), contains invaluable essays on excavation and is a stand-
ard work for American archaeologists. Phillip Barker, Understanding Archaeological Excavation
(London: Batsford, 1986), has a strong European orientation but is very perceptive. The same
author’s The Techniques of Archaeological Excavation, 2nd edn. (London: Batsford, 1993), and
Martha Joukowsky, A Complete Manual of Field Archaeology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall,
1981), are basic sources for the serious student.
newgenprepdf

8 Archaeological Classification
and Ancient Technologies

CHAPT ER OU TL I N E
Back from the Field 186
Classification and Taxonomy 186
Typology 190
Archaeological Types 191
The Concept of Types 195
Attributes and Types of Types 196
What Do Assemblages and Artifact Patternings Mean? 199
Units of Ordering 201
Components and Phases 201
Larger Archaeological Units 203
Ancient Technologies 203
Stone 204
Clay 206
Metals and Metallurgy 208
Bone, Wood, Basketry, and Textiles 210
 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies 185

A Moche stirrup spout vessel, Lambayeque Valley, Peru.

(PRISMA ARCHIVO / Alamy)

PREVIEW
Chapter 8 is concerned with artifacts and ancient technologies. The classification of arti-
facts is a controversial subject involving the use of statistical methods and a variety of
different “types of types,” including descriptive, chronological, functional, and stylistic
types. At a larger scale, archaeologists rely on a hierarchy of archaeological units such as
components and phases to order artifacts in time and space. After discussing the basics
of the classification of artifacts, we review the major ancient technologies, from simple
stone artifacts to elaborate iron objects and fine textiles.
Fresh air, modest (sometimes hectic) exercise, the potential for spectacular discover-
ies, a constant stream of challenging stratigraphic problems – nearly all archaeologists
enjoy excavation or survey work most of all. They dread the moment of truth when
186 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies
they return to base with truckloads of stone tools or potsherds and confront an uncom-
fortable reality: Most of the work still lies ahead, and much of it is the routine work of
sorting and artifact classification. BF vividly remembers once returning from the field
with a 3-ton truckload of potsherds and animal bones from a densely occupied African
village. He and his team piled dozens of cartons in a corner of the laboratory. As he
looked over the pile, he suddenly realized that he would hardly see the open air for
months!
The next four chapters take us into the laboratory, where much, if not most, archaeo-
logical research unfolds these days. With the advent of increasingly sophisticated analyt-
ical methods drawn from many sciences, a great deal of archaeology is now carried out
in air-conditioned laboratories rather than in the open air. Excavations and field surveys
are the popular image of archaeologists at work, but in fact hundreds of professional
archaeologists rarely go into the field. Their work lies almost entirely in laboratories.
Much of this work is slow-moving and unspectacular but nevertheless of the greatest
importance. Much of this routine surrounds the classification of artifacts and the study
of ancient technology, the subjects discussed in this chapter, but both are challenging yet
fascinating.

Back from the Field

The elaborate process of analysis and classification of finds of all kinds starts in the
field alongside excavation – processing and organizing the finds so that they can be
analyzed. These first stages in processing newly excavated archaeological finds are
entirely routine (see Figure 8.1). Most larger excavations maintain some form of field
laboratory. It is here that the major site records are maintained, stratigraphic pro-
file drawings are kept up to date, and radiocarbon samples and other special finds
are packed for examination by specialists. A small team staffs the field laboratory.
They ensure that all finds are cleaned, processed promptly, packed carefully, and
labeled and recorded precisely. A successful laboratory operation allows the director
of the excavation to evaluate the available data daily, even hourly. It is here, too, that
basic conservation work is carried out: reassembling fragmented pots, hardening
bones with chemicals, or stabilizing fragile objects. Computers play an important
role in the field laboratory, for they are used to code vast quantities of information
for later use.
The analysis continues back in the home laboratory, whether a short ceramic study
for a small-scale CRM project or an enormous, years-long activity that results from a
long-term survey or excavation. You need a good eye for detail, an orderly mind, and,
above all, infinite patience. It takes weeks to sort and classify even a relatively small
artifact collection.
Successful artifact analysis revolves around classification and typology, two funda-
mental archaeological skills.

Classification and Taxonomy

Our attitude toward life and our surroundings involves constant classification and
sorting of massive quantities of data. Driving along the freeway in the morning, we
unconsciously classify the tide of automobiles on the road: luxury sedans, sport utility
vehicles, pickups, vans. Then there are Chevrolets, Chryslers, Fords, Mercedes, and so
 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies 187

Figure 8.1 Classifying a potsherd collection. The basic stages of simple classification.

on, all of them in different colors and model configurations. We never stop classifying
artifacts, people, our surroundings. We classify types of eating utensils: knives, forks,
and spoons – each type has a different use and is kept in a separate compartment in
the drawer. In addition to classifying artifacts, lifestyles, and cultures, we make choices
among them. If we are eating soup, we choose to use a spoon. Some people eat rice with
a fork, some use chopsticks or their fingers, and others have decided that a spoon is
more suitable. A variety of choices is available, but the final decision is often dictated by
cultural custom rather than by functional pragmatism.
Everyone classifies because doing so is a requirement for abstract thought and lan-
guage. Classification, in archaeology, is the process of dividing artifacts and other data
into discrete types. Like the computer, however, classification should be a servant rather
than a master. In archaeology, classification is a research tool, a means for creating data.
All classifications used by archaeologists follow directly from the problems they are
studying. Let us say that our excavator is studying changes in pottery designs over a
500-year period in the Southwest. The classification he or she uses will follow not only
from what other people have done but also from the problems being studied. How and
even what you classify stems directly from the research questions asked of the data.
Taxonomy is a system for classifying materials, objects, and phenomena used in
many sciences, including archaeology. The taxonomies of biology, botany, geology,
and some other disciplines are highly sophisticated systems that were mainly created
in the nineteenth century and early in the twentieth. For example, biologists classify
188 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies
human beings within a hierarchy developed by Carolus Linnaeus in the eighteenth
century. It begins with the kingdom Animalia, the phylum Chordata (animals with
notochords and gill slits), the subphylum Vertebrata (animals with backbones), the
class Mammalia, the subclass Eutheria, the order Primates, the suborder Hominoidea
(apes and hominidae), the family Homininae, the genus Homo, and the species sapiens.
This hierarchy is gradually refined until only Homo sapiens remains in its own taxo-
nomic niche. It consists of a hierarchy of units. Each element in the hierarchy is defined
and related to the others.

Discovery
Exotic Islanders: Homo floresiensis
Archaeologists are not the only scientists to grapple with classification; witness the curi-
ous mystery of the Flores people from an island in Southeast Asia. One would reasonably
expect remote Flores Island to have been settled once efficient watercraft came into use,
but this was not the case. In 2003, excavations in Liang Bua Cave, or the ‘cool cave’, on
Flores yielded the first in a remarkable series of diminutive human skeletons dating to
between 95,000 and 12,000 years ago, associated with stone flakes and other artifacts
as well as the bones of a now-extinct elephant-like animal known as a stegodon. These
people were only about a meter (3.2 feet) tall (Figure 8.2). Their bones display a unique
mixture of primitive and more advanced characteristics. Their brains are the same size
as those of chimpanzees (c. 380 cubic centimeters), the skull displaying prominent brow
ridges and a low braincase. However, the face is small and delicate like that of modern
humans, being tucked under the brain like that of Homo sapiens. The teeth also are entirely
modern, whereas the legs are slight and the hips like those of an australopithecine.
Michael Morwood and his colleagues have named these people Homo floresiensis, but
their evolutionary status is a puzzle. Are these a remnant archaic human population, or are
they modern humans who crossed to Flores after 100,000 years ago, then developed their
unique anatomical characteristics and small stature as a result of isolation that led, among
other things, to endemic dwarfing? Or did they descend from a much earlier, still unknown,
small-brained hominin? Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and even australopithecines have all
also been suggested as possible ancestors, but at this early stage in research, we do not
know. Certainly the artifacts and evidence for use of fire suggest fully human behavior. The
controversies over the Flores people continue to smolder, with experts divided between
those who think they are archaic survivors and those who believe they are diminutive mod-
ern humans.
Flores has always been an island, isolated from neighboring land even during periods of
low sea level during the Ice Age. How, then, did the ancestors of H. floresiensis cross open
water? On rafts or in canoes, or by accident, clasping driftwood? The earliest known off-
shore journeys, to New Guinea and the Solomons, occurred before 50,000 years ago, so a
deliberate passage is not totally out of the question.

Archaeology has built its own taxonomy of specialist terminologies and concepts
quite haphazardly. Archaeological taxonomies have three major objectives:

1. Organizing data into manageable units. This step is part of the preliminary
data-processing operation, and it commonly involves separating finds on the
basis of raw material (stone, bone, and so on) or separating artifacts from food
remains. This preliminary ordering allows much more detailed classification
later on.
 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies 189

Figure 8.2 Artist’s reconstruction of Homo floresiensis.

(Peter Schouten / National Geographic Society / Reuters / Corbis)

2. Describing types. By identifying the individual features (attributes) of hundreds of

artifacts or clusters of artifacts, the archaeologist can group them by common attrib-
utes into relatively few types. These types represent patterns of separate associ-
ations of attributes. Such types are economical ways of describing large numbers of
artifacts. Which attributes are chosen depends on the purpose of the classification.
Artifact types (sometimes called archaeological types) are based on criteria set up by
archaeologists as a convenient way of studying ancient toolkits and technology. They
are a useful scientific device that provides a manageable way of classifying small and
large collections of prehistoric tools and the by-products from manufacturing them.
190 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies
3. Identifying relationships between types. Describing types orders the relationships
among artifacts. These stem, in part, from the use of a variety of raw materials,
manufacturing techniques, and functions.

These three objectives are much used in culture-historical research. The advent of com-
puters and statistical approaches to artifact classification has added a fourth objective:

4. Studying assemblage variability in the archaeological record. These studies are often
combined with ethnographic analogy or formal experiments with replicated
technologies.

Archaeological classifications are artificial formulations based on criteria set up by

archaeologists. These classificatory systems, however, do not necessarily coincide with
those developed by the people who made the original artifacts.

Typology
Typology is a system of classification based on the construction of types. It is a search
for patterns among either objects or the variables that define these objects, a search that
has taken on added meaning and complexity as archaeologists have begun to use com-
puter technology and sophisticated statistical methods.
Typology enables archaeologists to construct arbitrarily defined units of analysis that
apply to two or more samples of artifacts so that these samples can be compared object-
ively. These samples can come from different sites or from separate levels of the same
site. Typology is classification to permit comparison, an opportunity to examine under-
lying patterns of human design and behavior. The value of typology is that it enables
you to compare what has been found at two sites or in different levels of the same site.
Typology, as James Deetz (1967: 111) puts it, has one main aim: “classification which per-
mits comparison … Such a comparison allows the archaeologist to align his assemblage
with others in time and space.” Let us look over the shoulders of a group of archaeolo-
gists as they sort through a large pile of potsherds, from one occupation level, on the
laboratory table.
First the sherds are separated by decoration or lack of it, paste, temper, firing meth-
ods, and vessel shape (see Figure 8.3). Once the undecorated or shapeless potsherds
have been counted and weighed, they are put to one side unless they have some special
significance. Then the remaining sherds are examined individually and divided into
types according to the features they display. Some potsherds stand out because they
enable one to distinguish different vessel functions – globular pots, shallow bowls, and
so on, which provides one basis for type classification by function. Many sherds tell
one little about vessel form or function, but they bear different painted designs, a basis
for distinguishing different styles. The classifier piles them on the table by style of dec-
oration: One pile consists of sherds painted with black designs; a second, red-painted
fragments; a third, a group of plain sherds. Once the preliminary sort is completed, the
archaeologists look over each pile in turn. They have already identified three broad
types in the pottery collection. But when they examine the first pile more closely, they
find that the black-painted sherds can be divided into several smaller groupings: one
with square, black panels; another with diamond designs; and a third with black-dotted
decoration. In the end, the researchers may identify three functional types and perhaps
eight or nine stylistic types on the basis of decoration and other stylistic features, each,
 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies 191

Figure 8.3 S
 ome common attributes of a clay vessel. Specific attributes that could be listed for
this pot are concave shoulder, dot and drag decoration, mica temper, round base, and
thickness of wall at base.

perhaps, with several subtypes. The archaeologists study the collection in minute detail,
identifying dozens, if not hundreds, of attributes, distinctive features of an artifact – for
example, the thickness of a pot wall or a type of base-thinning on a stone projectile
point. The features may be conspicuous or inconspicuous, stylistic or dimensional, or
even based on chemical analyses. This is the process of typology, classifying artifacts so
that one type can be compared with another. Obviously, the types from this one site can
be compared with other arbitrary types found during laboratory sorting of collections
from nearby sites.

Archaeological Types
For accurate and meaningful comparisons between artifacts to be made, rigorous defini-
tions of analytical types are needed to define not only the “norm” of the artifact type but
also its approximate range of variation, at either end of which one type merges into one
or two others. Conventional analytical definitions are usually couched in terms of one
or more attributes that indicate how the artifact was made, the shape, the decoration, or
some other distinctive feature. These definitions are set up following carefully defined
technological differences, often bolstered by measurements or statistical clusterings of
attributes. Most often, the average artifact, rather than the variation between individual
examples, is the ultimate objective of the definition.
We all have strong opinions about how we classify artifacts, just as did the people
who originally made them, for each has or had a distinctive role in society. Our imme-
diate instinct is to look at and classify ancient artifacts from our own cultural stand-
point. That is, of course, what prehistoric peoples did as well. The owners of the tools
192 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies
that archaeologists study classified them into groups for themselves, each one having
a definite role in their society. We assign different roles in eating to a knife, a fork, and
a spoon. Knives cut meat; steak knives are used for eating steaks. Likewise in ancient
times: The stone arrowhead was employed in the chase; one type of missile head was
used to hunt deer, another to shoot birds, and so on. The use of an artifact may be
determined not only by convenience and practical considerations but also by custom
or regulation. The light barbed spearheads used by some Australian hunting bands
to catch fish are too fragile for dispatching a kangaroo; the special barbs permit the
impaled fish to be lifted out of the water. Baskets or pots are made by women in most
African and Native American societies, which practice division of labor by sex; each
society has complicated customs, regulations, or taboos which, functional consider-
ations apart, categorize clay pots into different types with varying uses and rules in the
culture (see Figure 8.4).
Furthermore, each society has its own conception of what a particular artifact should
look like, whether it is a wooden mask from the Pacific Northwest (see Figure 8.5) or a
simple acorn pounder from the southern California interior. Americans have generally
preferred larger cars, Europeans small ones. These preferences reflect not only prag-
matic considerations of road width and longer distances to travel in the New World
but also differing attitudes toward traveling and, for many Americans, a preoccupation
with prestige manifested in gold-leaf lettering and custom colors, hub caps, and style.
The steering wheel is on the left, and the car is equipped with turn signals and seat belts
by law. In other words, we know what we want and expect an automobile to look like,
even though minor design details change – as do the length of women’s skirts and the
width of men’s ties.
Archaeologists have a different problem. They have to devise archaeological types
that are appropriate to the research problems they are tackling, an extremely difficult
task. In archaeology, a type is a grouping of artifacts created for comparison with other
groups. This grouping may or may not coincide with the actual tool types designated by
the original makers. A good example of a type comes from the world-famous Olduvai
Gorge site in East Africa, where Louis and Mary Leakey excavated a series of cache
sites used by very early humans, Homo habilis. Mary Leakey studied the stone tools
and grouped them in the Oldowan tradition, a tradition characterized by jagged-edged
chopping tools and flakes (see Figure 8.6). She based her classifications on close exam-
ination of the artifacts, and the assumption that the first human toolkit was based on
crude stone choppers soon became archaeological dogma.
Nicholas Toth of Indiana University has taken a radically different approach to clas-
sifying Oldowan artifacts. He has spent many hours not only studying and classifying
the original artifacts but also learning Oldowan technology for himself, replicating hun-
dreds of artifacts made by Homo habilis 2 million years ago. His controlled experiments
have suggested that Homo habilis was interested in the sharp-edged flakes they knocked
off lumps of lava for cutting and butchering the game meat they scavenged from preda-
tor kills. According to Toth, many of the “chopping tools” long thought to be the charac-
teristic tools of Homo habilis were, in fact, just cores or the end product of knocking flakes
off convenient lumps of lava. But the chances are that many were used as choppers as
well as cores.
Controlled experiments like Toth’s provide useful insights into how prehistoric
peoples manufactured the tools they needed. Toth and other experts are now trying
to study the telltale patterns of edge wear on the cutting edges of Oldowan flakes, as
the polish, striations, and microflake scars left by working, for example, fresh bone as
opposed to hide or wood are highly distinctive. With controlled experimentation and
 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies 193

Figure 8.4 T
 his fine Pomo Indian basket being made in northern California is a good example of
the difficulties of archaeological classification. The design was formed in the maker’s
mind by several factors, most important of which is the tremendous reservoir of learned
cultural experience that the Pomo acquired, generation by generation, through the sev-
eral thousand years they lived in northern California. The designs of their baskets are
learned and relate to the feeling that such and such a form and color are “correct” and
traditionally acceptable. But there are more pragmatic and complex factors, too, includ-
ing the circular, bowl-like shape that enables the user to winnow wild seeds by tossing
them gently. Each attribute of the basket has a good reason for its presence – whether
traditional, innovative, functional, or imposed by the technology used to make it. The
problem for the archaeologist is to measure the variations in human artifacts, to estab-
lish the causes behind the directions of change, and to find what these variations can
be used to measure. This fine winnowing tray is a warning that variations in human
artifacts are both complex and subtle.
The Pomo hunter-gatherers occupied a large stretch of northern California coast and
interior north of the San Francisco Bay area. There were about 12,000 of them living in
small bands at European contact. They enjoyed a complex ritual and social life.
(Inga Spence / Alamy)

careful examination of edge wear, they hope to achieve a closer marriage between the
ways in which the first humans used stone tools and the classifications devised by the
archaeologist hundreds of thousands of years later (for more on experimental archae-
ology, see Chapter 9).
Everyone agrees that types are clusters of attributes or clusters of objects. Although
patterns of attributes may be fairly easy to identify, how do archaeologists know what
is a type and what is not? Controversy surrounds this issue. Should they try to repro-
duce the categories of pot that the makers themselves conceived? Or should they just
Figure 8.5 T
 lingit wooden mask from the Northwest Coast, classified as a natural type when found
in an archaeological context. This artifact would obviously be classified as a helmet
from the perspective of our cultural experience. The Tlingit subsisted off foraging, sea
mammal hunting, and fishing and enjoyed one of the most complex hunter-gatherer
societies on earth.
(Peter Horree / Alamy)

Figure 8.6 A
 n Oldowan “chopping tool”: A simplified picture of the process of making a jagged
edge by flaking a cobble from both sides (top). A large disc-shaped Oldowan artifact in
plain and side view (bottom).
 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies 195

Figure 8.7 A
 Chavín carving on a pillar in the temple interior at Chavín de Huantar, Peru. This
reconstruction makes the temple walls seem more regular and the background more
open than they actually were. The distinctive motifs exhibit the style of Chavín art
spread throughout highland and coastal Peru, marking an interval termed the Chavín
horizon that cuts across many local sequences.

go ahead and create “archaeological” types designed purely for analytical purposes?
The archaeologist constructs typologies based on the reoccurrence of formal patterns
of physical features of artifacts. Many of these formal types have restricted distribu-
tions in space and time, which suggest they represent distinctive “styles” of construc-
tion and/or tasks that were carried out in the culture to which they belong. For example,
the so-called Chavín art style was widespread over much of coastal and highland Peru
after 900 b.c. The jaguar, snake, and human forms of this art are highly characteris-
tic and mark the spread of a distinctive iconography over a large area of the Andean
region. Chavín art, and the characteristic styles associated with it, had a specific role in
Peruvian society of the time (see Figure 8.7).

The Concept of Types

Archaeological typology is based on the archaeologist’s “concept of types,” a subject of
great controversy in archaeology. On a formal level, a type can be defined as a group
or class of items that is internally cohesive and separated from other groups by one
or more discontinuities. Archaeologists tend to use four “types of types” (descriptive,
chronological, functional, and stylistic), which we describe briefly here; in practice they
are rarely separated one from another, for experts tend to draw this kind of information
196 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies
from more general classifications of artifacts. Most researchers now argue that types are
identified by combinations of attributes that distinguish and isolate one artifact type
from another. In the final analysis, the idea is to organize data in such a way as to reveal
continuities and breaks between groups of artifacts that display internal cohesion and
are isolated from other such groups.

Attributes and Types of Types

Attributes are the physical characteristics used to distinguish one artifact from another.
Every commonplace artifact we use has such attributes. The familiar glass beer mug has
a curved handle that extends from near the lip to the base; often fluted sides; a straight,
rounded rim; and dimensions that are set by the amount of beer it is intended to con-
tain. It is manufactured of clear, relatively thick glass (the thickness can be defined by
precise measurement). You can find numerous attributes in any human artifact, be it a
diamond ring or a prehistoric pot. For example, a collection of fifty potsherds lying on a
laboratory table may bear black-painted designs; eight have red panels on the neck, ten
are shallow bowls, and so on. An individual potsherd may come from a vessel made of
bright red clay that was mixed with powdered seashells so the clay would fire better. It
may come from a pot with a thick rim made by applying a rolled circle of clay before fir-
ing and a crisscross design cut into the wet clay with a sharp knife during manufacture.
Each of the many individual features is an attribute, most of which are obvious enough.
Only a critically selected few of these attributes, however, will be used in classifying the
artifacts. (If all were used, then no classification would be possible: Each artifact would
be an individual object identified by an infinite number of attributes.) Thus the archae-
ologist works with only those attributes considered most appropriate for the classifica-
tory task at hand.
The selection of attributes and the entire process of archaeological classification
involves many hours in the laboratory working with large numbers of artifacts that are
laid out on tables and examined individually. Today the archaeologist relies heavily on
quantitative methods, both for describing and comparing artifacts and for recording
and manipulating attribute data. A discussion of these approaches lies beyond the scope
of this short book. Attribute-based classifications of artifacts are based on large numbers
of attributes, selected by the classifier and usually coded on a computer. Statistical typ-
ologies are often derived from attribute clusters, the archaeologist using statistically
derived attribute clusters as a way of dividing artifact collections into categories. This
approach gives researchers an insight into the most important artifact clusters; however,
many different criteria can affect such clustering. For example, a classification of bronze
swords based on blade dimensions results in a very different clustering from one based
on the sources and composition of the copper and tin used to fabricate them. Other
quantitative approaches, outside the scope of this book, work with entire artifacts. They
calculate the similarities between all possible pairs of objects in a collection to produce
hierarchies of different artifact clusters.
Quantitative methods enable archaeologists to organize artifact data in intelligent,
efficient, and replicable ways, allowing them to discern possible patterns that relate to
past human behavior. These same techniques also allow them to evaluate the reliabil-
ity of their inferences objectively and to make inferences about the interrelationships
between different variables in attribute counts. As such, they are an invaluable aid to
artifact classification.
You will encounter four general archaeological types that are in wide use in typo-
logical studies, as follows (see Figure 8.8 and Figure 8.9).
 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies 197

Figure 8.8 11,000-year-old Mesolithic artifacts from Star Carr, England (shown actual size).
You can classify these as follows: descriptive type, geometric small tools; chronological type,
Mesolithic microliths (from the Greek “small stone”), Star Carr forms; functional type, microlithic
arrowhead barbs.
(From Excavations at Star Carr by Grahame Clark. © Cambridge University Press, 1954, 1971, 1978.)

Descriptive types are the most elementary descriptions, based solely on the form of
the artifact – physical or external properties. The descriptive type is used even when
the use or cultural significance of the object or practice is known. For example, the exca-
vations at Snaketown in southern Arizona revealed a “large basin-like depression,” a
mysterious feature that also turned up at other Hohokam sites in the Southwest. This
descriptive type was subsequently proven to be a ball court, and so the noncommittal
descriptive classification was abandoned in favor of a functional one that defined the
structure’s role in Hohokam culture.
Descriptive types are commonly used for artifacts and sites from early prehistory,
when functional interpretations are impossible (see Figure 8.8).
Chronological types are defined by form but are time markers. They are types with
chronological significance. Like descriptive types, they are part of a culture’s inventory
as reflected in the archaeological record, but they are widely used to distinguish chrono-
logical differences. For example, in many parts of North America, Clovis and Folsom
points were used for short periods of prehistoric time, the former in about 11,000 b.c.
and the latter somewhat earlier (see Figure 6.3 on p. 135). Projectile points have long
been used as chronological markers in North American archaeology. Pottery is probably
the most common form of chronological type, for the clay, decoration, and so on change
and are shown to be significant historical indexes.
Chronological types are defined in terms of attributes that do show change over time
(see Chapter 5). When the archaeologist compares artifacts known to be of different
ages, certain attributes are observed to be different, so he or she uses them to define
the types.
198 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies

Figure 8.9 A
 functional type of artifact: Early Bronze Age Scandinavian flint daggers, c. 2000 to
1500 b . c .
(PRISMA ARCHIVO / Alamy)

Functional types are based on cultural use or role rather than on outward form or
chronological position. The same artifacts can be treated as functional or descriptive
types. You can classify an assemblage in broad categories: “wood,” “bone,” “stone,” and
so on. But a functional classification can be adopted equally well: “weapons,” “cloth-
ing,” “food preparation,” and so on.
Ideally, functional types should reflect the precise roles and functional classifications
made by the members of the society from which they came. Needless to say, such an
objective is virtually impossible to achieve because of incomplete preservation and lack
of written records. Many artifacts – for example, the polished stone ax, the dagger, the
bow and arrow, or the atlatl, the prehistoric throwing-stick – were in use for thousands
of years, indeed right into modern times. In many cases like these, it is easy to tell what
an artifact was used for (see Figure 8.9). However, we have no means of visualizing the
complex roles that some artifacts played in prehistoric society or of establishing the
restrictions placed on their use by the society.
Stylistic types are best exemplified by items such as dress because style is often used
to convey information by displaying it in public. The Aztecs of central Mexico lived in
a ranked society where everyone’s dress was carefully regulated by sumptuary laws –
regulations governing dress codes (see Figure 8.10). Thus a glance at the noble in the
marketplace could reveal not only his rank but the number of prisoners he had taken in
 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies 199

Figure 8.10 A
 ztec warriors wearing elaborate uniforms signifying different ranks, awarded
according to the number of captives taken in battle. From the Aztec document known
as the Codex Mendoza.
(World History Archive / Alamy)

battle and many other subtle facts. Even the gods had their own regalia and costumes
that reflected their roles in the pantheon.
Stylistic types can be expected, theoretically at any rate, to have a structure entirely
different from that of functional ones. As such, they are not used often in archaeological
classification, except when historical records are available. The approach is much
debated.
Descriptions of different artifact types still remain a fundamental part of the
archaeologist’s work.

What Do Assemblages and Artifact Patternings Mean?

For generations, archaeologists studying culture history classified artifacts into assem-
blages, associations of tools that were thought to be contemporary. This approach
assumed that human culture had evolved through the millennia. Thus artifact
200 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies
assemblages were merely traces of contemporary cultural “species” that extended far
back into prehistory. This “organic” view of culture history saw assemblages of arti-
facts as distinct categories, like organic species, which did not modify their form from
one context to the next. The organic approach assumed that a specific cultural tradition
leads to only one characteristic type of industry in the archaeological record, an indus-
try circumscribed in time and space. The organic view of the past is a highly organized
scheme, rather like the medieval “chain of being” in early biology, where every living
thing had its place in the general scheme of things.
American archaeologists have generally preferred a more “cultural” perspective, mak-
ing considerable use of data on artifacts and other culture traits known to have been used
by living societies in North America. The observation of these data has shown a strong
correlation between the distributions of distinctive cultural forms and different environ-
ments. For example, plank houses and an elaborate canoe technology are characteristic
of the peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, where readily split cedar and other trees
flourished in abundance. In contrast, desert peoples in the Great Basin lived in much
more transitory settlements of brush shelters and houses using a highly portable toolkit
that was adapted to a mobile desert lifeway. It is all very well to say that such correlations
were true of historical times, but what about earlier prehistory? Can we say that artifact
assemblages from the Great Basin dating to 5,000 years ago reflect similar adaptations
and similar social groups? Were conditions different in the past from today – can modern
artifact patternings be used as a basis for interpreting ancient behavior?
Some archaeologists, among them Lewis Binford, have attacked this problem by
studying living hunter-gatherer societies. Binford spent time among the Nunamiut cari-
bou hunters of northern Alaska. There he learned that the only way to understand a
living society’s subsistence and material culture is to conceive of all of their sites as
part of a larger cultural system. The Nunamiut had residential sites and other kinds of
sites used for specialized purposes. Thus, he argued, archaeologists have to identify the
specific function of each site they examine, then fit the sites into a much larger, overall
pattern of land use.
Archaeology’s basic unit is the site; the artifacts in it are part of an assemblage pattern
that reveals the different activities that took place there. If archaeologists want to under-
stand the dynamics of cultural systems like that of the Nunamiut in the past, they have
to study and interpret prehistoric living conditions, using such classificatory devices
as typology, tool frequencies, and the relationships between tool debris and finished
artifacts as just some of their methods of doing so. Thus the role of classification in
archaeology has shifted away from “organic” viewpoints that see artifacts and cultures
as finite in time and space to new means of problem-oriented classification that concen-
trate not only on individual tools but on entire assemblages and their patternings.
However, the data for interpreting these patterns must finally come from sources
other than stone tools or potsherds. In other words, classification alone is meaning-
less unless the classifications are interpreted in terms of other data. Here the study of
contemporary societies – so-called middle-range research – is coming into its own (see
Chapter 9). Artifact classifications are still carried out for the most part with approaches
meant for reconstructing culture history, formulations of time and space that owe much
to functional classifications of artifacts based on common sense. At the same time, how-
ever, explanatory frameworks based on theories of social change are providing new
explanations of the past. They are designed to account for the structure and change that
everyone can see in the archaeological record of the ages, phenomena that are far more
dynamic and ever-changing than implied by the more rigid classifications of earlier
scholars.
 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies 201

Units of Ordering
Recall from Chapter 5 that an assemblage is the diverse group of artifacts found together
that reflects the shared activities of a community. This assemblage is found in a sin-
gle site. Recall, too, that the site is the fundamental unit for all stratigraphic studies in
archaeology. Units of ordering are universal in archaeology, but there are significant dif-
ferences between those used in the Americas and in the Old World, which are glossed
over here for space reasons. For example, Old World archaeologists refer to components
as “industries” and to phases as “cultures.” In general, Americanist terms are empha-
sized here (see Figure 8.11).

Components and Phases

Many archaeological sites, such as the 8,000-year-old Olsen–Chubbuck bison kill site in
Colorado, consist of a single assemblage of artifacts and a single component – another
archaeological unit. A component is a physically bounded portion of a site that con-
tains a distinct assemblage, which serves to distinguish the culture of the inhabitants of
a particular level. Sites that were occupied many times, like Hogup Cave in Utah, vis-
ited repeatedly over a period of more than 9,000 years, contain many components, each
of them distinguished by assemblages that separate them in time and space from other
components at the same site. The social equivalent of the archaeologist’s component is
the community.
Once the research team’s analysis is completed, they may find they have only one
component to deal with. If the site was occupied several times, they might have two
or three. How do they compare these components with those from other, nearby
sites? And how do they develop a sequence of occupation levels and cultures for their
local area?
When all of the artifact collections from the local area have been analyzed and
classified to everyone’s satisfaction, they are ordered in space and time with the aid
of stratigraphic observations, seriation, cross-dating, and radiocarbon or tree-ring
dates. In Chapter 5, we described both seriation and cross-dating techniques that
place artifacts in chronological order with the help of battleship curves and dated
components. Figure 5.7 on p. 113 shows how the Tehuacán Valley archaeologists
joined ten sites into a local sequence, a chronological ordering built up from several
multicomponent sites and some single-component settlements within the area. They
were also able to obtain some radiocarbon dates to give an accurate chronology for
the sequence.
The research team discovered from distribution maps that two different dated com-
ponents were repeated at settlements over a considerable area. These were so well dated
and precisely distributed in time that two phases in the sequence could be identified.
A phase is a cultural unit represented by like components on different sites or at
different levels of the same site, although always within a well-defined chronological
bracket. The characteristic assemblage of artifacts of the phase may be found over hun-
dreds of miles within the area covered by a local sequence. Many Old World archae-
ologists use the term culture in the same sense as phase. Both are concepts designed to
assist in ordering artifacts in time and space. Phases or cultures usually are named after
a key site where characteristic artifacts are found. The Acheulian culture, for example,
is named after the northern French town of Saint-Acheul, where the stone hand axes so
characteristic of this culture are found (see Figure 8.12).
Figure 8.11 Archaeological units in use. (a) Patterns of attributes form an artifact type. (b)
Cross-section through a hypothetical archaeological site with two stratified compo-
nents. The two components are radiocarbon dated to between 250 b.c. and a.d. 100
and between a . d. 100 and 350, respectively. Our artifact type is a diagnostic vessel in
Component A, the later one. The total artifact content from the site is the assemblage.
(c) Now the archaeologists have studied dozens of sites in their archaeological region,
which consists of an estuary with an offshore island. Higher ground with pine forest
overlooks the estuary. When they plotted site distributions, they found that the earlier
Phase B sites were distributed on the higher ground and the later components were
established near the shore where shellfish were abundant. Only three sites contain
both components, stratified one above the other. The two distributions are distinct-
ive, both phases defined in space and time, forming a local sequence. (d) At the four
two-component sites, the archaeologists seriated the pottery types and other artifacts
and obtained distinctive battleship curves. Then they were able to fit other sites into
the same sequence by cross-dating.
 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies 203

Larger Archaeological Units

After many seasons’ work, the research team may have studied several local sequences
and may be able to describe their finds in a wide context such as that of the dozens of
local sequences within the southwestern United States. Some characteristic art styles
or artifacts spread over considerable distances, such as the Chavín art that flourished
in Peru between 900 and 200 b.c., perhaps representing the popularity of a new set of
religious beliefs which originated at Chavín de Huantar in the Andes mountain foothills
(see Figure 8.7 on p. 195).
Archaeologists sometimes use the term horizon to cover such phenomena, where
a number of phases in neighboring areas contain rather general cultural patterns in
common. The term tradition describes lasting artifact types, assemblages of tools, archi-
tectural styles, economic practices, or art styles that last much longer than one phase
or even the duration of a horizon. A single toolmaking tradition may continue in use
while the many cultures that share it develop in entirely different ways. A good example
of a tradition is the so-called Paleoarctic tradition of Alaska that originated at least as
early as 9000 b.c. and lasted for several thousand years. Perhaps the most renowned
larger archaeological units are those identified by the Danish archaeologist Christian
Jurgensen Thomsen in 1816. His Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age technological
labels (the so-called three-age system) are still in wide use.

Ancient Technologies
The artifacts that people have manufactured throughout their long history have enabled
them to augment their limbs and extend their use of the environment. The technological
achievements of humanity over the past 2.5 million years have been both impressive and
terrifying. Today, we can land an astronaut on the moon, transplant human hearts, and
build sophisticated computers. Yet, in the final analysis, our contemporary technologies
have evolved in a direct, albeit branching, way from the first simple tools made by the
earliest human beings. These evolving, and sometimes very durable, technologies have

Figure 8.12 T
 hree views of an Acheulian stone ax from Swanscombe on the River Thames,
England. One-third full size. Acheulian hand axes were general-purpose artifacts
used widely by archaic humans in Africa, Europe, and southern Asia from before a
million years ago up to after 200,000 years ago.
204 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies
survived in the archaeological record and provide one of the primary sources of infor-
mation on the past.
Stone, bone, clay, fiber, metal, shell, textiles, skin, hair, hide, and also wood were the
main raw materials used by our forebears. Of these, metal ores require smelting, a tech-
nology that came into use in Southwest Asia about 5,000 years ago and in the Americas
within the past 2,000 years. Bone, fiber, and other organic materials like hide do not
survive well, so it is no coincidence that stone and fired clay have attracted the most
archaeological interest and provide the foundation for classification of many prehistoric
cultures.

Stone
Stone tools were the earliest artifacts, little more than simple sharp-edged flakes struck
off lava lumps by the simple expedient of knocking one stone against another. Over the
ensuing millennia, people exploited almost every possibility afforded by rocks suitable
for making tools of all kinds – axes, borers, choppers, knives, scrapers, and delicate
spearheads. The manufacture of stone tools is a reductive, or subtractive, technol-
ogy, for stone is acquired and then shaped by removing flakes until the desired form
is achieved. Their making depends on the property of conchoidal fracture, character-
istic of many crystalline rocks such as flint or obsidian. Such stone breaks in a predict-
able way when struck vertically, producing characteristic fracture patterns and cores or
flakes, which allow an archaeologist to identify the rock as humanly modified and as an
artifact (see Figure 8.13).
For millennia, people did little more than fracture a rock with another stone.
Eventually, they began making tool flakes on both sides, like the Acheulian hand ax
(see Figure 8.12 on p. 203), and eventually turning to bone, a softer hammer, to make
thinner and better-finished tools. After about 100,000 years ago, Homo sapiens used more
sophisticated technologies that produced specialized artifacts such as spear points and
scrapers designed for specific purposes. These technologies culminated in the use of
punches to prepare dozens of fine blades – thin, often parallel-sided blanks used to
make a wide variety of small tools such as chisel-shaped gravers for working bone and
antler. The effect was somewhat like that of the Swiss army knife, in which a chassis
with strong springs supports a variety of specialized tools such as knife blades, cork-
screws, or spikes. In the same way, a blade core produced blades, which in turn pro-
duced more specialized artifacts, some of which were then used to cut antler and other
raw materials.
Later Stone Age peoples ground and polished stone when they needed a sharp and
highly durable blade. They shaped the edges by rough flaking and then laboriously
polished and ground them against a coarser rock, such as sandstone, to produce a sharp,
tough working edge. Modern experiments have demonstrated the greater effective-
ness of polished stone axes in felling forest trees, the toughened working edge taking
longer to blunt than that of a flaked axe. Polished stone axes became important in many
early farming societies, especially in Europe, Asia, Mesoamerica, and parts of temper-
ate North America. They were used in New Guinea as early as 28,000 years ago and in
Melanesia and Polynesia for the manufacture of canoes, which were essential for fishing
and trade.
Some of the finest stoneworking dates from more recent times. The Predynastic
Egyptians made superb ceremonial knives. Ancient Native Americans made deli-
cate projectile points, shaping them with small billets of bone or antler and pressure
techniques. By this time, many human societies produced diminutive stone artifacts
 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies 205

Figure 8.13 T
 he earliest stoneworking techniques. (a) Using a hammerstone. (b) A variant on the
hammerstone, striking a core against a stone block, the so-called anvil technique. (c)
The earliest stone tools were made by a simple method. The top row shows the side
view: First, two flakes were struck off (1 and 2); second, the stone was turned over
and two more flakes were removed (3); third, a fifth flake completed the useful life of
the core (4). The bottom row shows the process from above. (d) A simplified picture of
making Oldowan bifaces. (e) A large Oldowan discoid-like artifact from Chesowanja,
East Africa, in plain and side views. The stoneworker used this bifacial technique but
did not fashion the biface along a long axis, as later humans did.

designed as arrow barbs and used for other specialized purposes (see Figure 8.8 on
p. 197).
Expert stoneworkers still fashion artifacts to this day, especially gunflints for use
in flintlock muskets. Gunflint manufacture was a flourishing industry in Britain and
France into the twentieth century and is still practiced in Angola, Africa, where flintlock
206 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies
muskets are still in use for hunting. Lithic technology has a modern application as well.
Obsidian flake and blade edges are so sharp that they are widely used by modern eye
surgeons, on the grounds that such cutting tools are superior to modern steel!
It is all too easy to think of stone artifacts as merely lifeless objects, when, in fact,
they once had a life of their own. Belgian archaeologist Daniel Cahen’s reconstruction
of stoneworking at the 9,000-year-old Meer site in northern Belgium, described at the
beginning of Chapter 2, is a classic example of sophisticated lithic analysis. He and col-
league Lawrence Keeley combined edge-wear analysis with refitting to reconstruct a
fascinating scenario. They used the evidence from three borers that were turned coun-
terclockwise to show that a right-handed artisan walked away from the settlement, sat
on a boulder, and made some tools, using some prepared blanks and cores he brought
with him. Later a left-handed artisan came and sat next to him, bringing a previously
prepared core, from which he proceeded to strike some blanks that he turned into tools.
For this reason, lithic analysis, the study of stone artifacts and technology, is based
not only on the identification of attributes and types but on actual reconstructions of
the reductive technology used to make them. This requires refitting (retrofitting) of
actual cores and waste flakes found in excavations, a painstaking task that can produce
remarkable results, like identifying the work of individual stoneworkers, some of whom
may be left-handed. Lithic experimentation, the actual replication of stone technologies,
has long been part of experimental archaeology (see Chapter 9), and the study of the
edge wear on long-discarded tools under microscopes combined with actual experi-
ments has produced evidence for cutting hide, meat, and bone. Some artifacts have even
produced trace elements of organic residues such as blood still clinging to the cutting
edges of butchery tools.
Petrological analyses have been applied with great success to the rocks from which
stone tools are made, especially ground stone axes in Europe. Petrology is the study of
rocks (Greek petros: stone). A thin section of the ax is prepared and examined under a
microscope. The minerals in the rock can then be identified and compared with samples
from ancient quarry sites. British archaeologists have had remarkable success with this
approach and have identified more than twenty sources of ax blade stone in Britain
alone. Spectrographic analysis of distinctive trace elements in obsidian has yielded
remarkable results in southwestern Asia and Mesoamerica, where this distinctive vol-
canic rock was traded widely from several quarry centers (see Chapter 12).
Lithic analysis is not just the study of artifacts; it is the understanding of what the
implements mean in terms of human behavior.

Clay
From the earliest times, people used containers of all kinds, such as animal skins, bark
trays, gourds, and ostrich eggshells. The invention of pottery seems to have coincided
with the beginnings of more lasting settlement. Fired-clay receptacles have the advan-
tage of being both durable and long-lived. We can assume that the first clay vessels were
used for domestic purposes: for cooking, carrying water, and storing food. They soon
assumed more specialized roles in salt making, in ceremonial activities, and as oil lamps
and burial urns. In about 8000 b.c., the Jomon people of Japan started making baked
clay containers, an innovation that took hold in southwestern Asia before 6000 b.c. and
in the Americas after 2500 b.c.
Clay containers, or rather their broken fragments, have the advantage of being both
durable and long-lived, which is why they are such an important part of the archaeo-
logical record. They served as water and storage containers and as cooking and drinking
 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies 207

Figure 8.14 Hopi woman making pottery with clay coils, Oraibi Pueblo, Arizona, 1903.
(Corbis)

vessels. Their shape, style, and form have been the basis for thousands of archaeological
analyses. Prehistoric artisans created their pieces individually, using the simplest
of technology but attaining astonishing skill in shaping and adorning their pots (see
Figure 8.14). They selected their clay with great care, pounded it and prepared it to a
fine consistency, then built up their pots in a variety of ways, most commonly by build-
ing up long coils of clay, by using a mold, or, in later times in the Old World, by using a
potter’s wheel. The outside surface was smoothed with the hands, sometimes painted
with a wet clay solution, then dried before being burnished, decorated, and fired in
an open fire or later in a kiln. As with other artifacts, the making of clay vessels was
circumscribed by all manner of social and other variables, which are almost impossible
to discern from conventional archaeological analysis. Such analyses focus on the form,
function, style, and technology of the vessel. The latter includes studies of the fabric and
clay paste, using such techniques as neutron activation analysis and X-ray diffraction to
study what has been called “ceramic ecology,” the interaction of resources, local know-
ledge, and style that led to finished clay vessels.
Some of the most remarkable ceramic research involves not the vessels themselves
but their contents. In 1988, German Egyptologist Günter Dreyer excavated the tomb of
one of Egypt’s first leaders at Abydos on the Middle Nile. Scorpion I lived in about 3150
b.c. His elaborate tomb contained four rooms stocked with at least 700 jars, which held
a total of about 1,200 gallons (4,550 liters) of wine. Forty-seven of the jars contained
grape pips, together with remains of sliced figs that were once suspended on strings
in the wine, probably to sweeten it. The crusty residues adhering to the insides of the
pots were analyzed with an infrared spectrometer and liquid chromatography, which
revealed the remains of tartaric acids (found naturally in grapes), also of terebinth resin,
208 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies
which ancient vintners used to prevent wine from turning into vinegar. Neutron acti-
vation analysis of the clay jar yielded trace element clusters that were compared to a
large database of samples from Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean. The database
pointed to the southern hill country of Israel and Transjordan as the source of the ves-
sels, an area where vine growing was well established in 3100 b.c. The wine probably
traveled the Nile across an ancient trade route, “the Way of Horus,” that linked southern
Israel with Egypt via the Sinai Desert. By 3000 b.c., vine growing and wine waking
were well established in the Nile Delta in northern Egypt, the source of the pharaoh
Tutankhamun’s wines 1,500 years later.

Metals and Metallurgy

“Hough!” “Hough!” The goatskin bellows emit a steady puffing noise as the African
smith raises and lowers the bags with his hands, singing along the way. Every 20 min-
utes, another member of the team takes over as the master smith keeps a close eye on
the clay furnace loaded with iron ore and charcoal. He adds charcoal, then more ore,
then charcoal again. The smelt continues for 7 hours until the master is satisfied. Then
he rakes out the white-hot charcoal and recovers a lump of slag and smelted iron from
the fire. All the preparation time and 7 hours of arduous bellows work produced just
enough iron to make one small hoe. In these days of mass-produced steel and all kinds
of exotic metals, we forget just how much labor went into producing even a single iron
tool. The development of metallurgy is one of humanity’s great innovations, but it was
certainly not a labor-saving invention.
Metals were familiar phenomena to ancient peoples in the form of rocks in their envir-
onment. Perhaps their color, luster, and weight made them attractive to use as orna-
ments. Eventually, people realized that native copper and other rocks could be formed
into tools by a sequence of hammering and heating. But only eight metals – arsenic,
copper, gold, iron, lead, mercury, tin, and silver – were worked before the eighteenth
century a.d.
The earliest metal tools were made in southwestern Asia by 6000 b.c. by cold ham-
mering copper into simple artifacts. Copper tools were commonplace by 4000 b.c., but
the major revolution came after 3000 b.c. when smiths learned how to alloy the metal
with arsenic, lead, or about 10 percent tin to produce tough-edged bronze tools and
weapons. By 2500 b.c., practically every kind of metallurgical phenomenon except
hardening of steel was known (see Figure 8.15). The use of tin alloying may have stimu-
lated much trading activity, for the metal is relatively rare, especially in the eastern
Mediterranean region. The Uluburun ship, described in Chapter 13, carried tin ingots,
and 4,500 years ago, Chinese smiths were using clay molds to produce highly sophis-
ticated three-legged cauldrons and other ceremonial vessels. Ironworking appeared in
southwestern Asia in about 1500 b.c. and was in widespread use five centuries later.
Iron is a utilitarian and abundant metal ore, ideal for making farming tools and weap-
ons. In contrast, few utilitarian metal objects were made in the Americas, where copper
and gold were used predominantly for ornamentation and ritual purposes.
Gold played a vital part in prestige and ornamentation in many ancient societies. The
pharaoh Tutankhamun is sometimes called the “Golden Pharaoh”: His grave was rich in
spectacular gold objects. The burials of Moche lords of a.d. 400 at Sipán, Peru, revealed
the remarkable wealth of this desert civilization. One shroud-wrapped warrior-priest
wore a pair of gold eyes, a gold nose, and a gold chin-and-neck visor; his head was
lying on a gold, saucer-like headrest (see Figure 2.6 on p. 43). Hundreds of minute gold
and turquoise beads adorned this lord of Sipán, who wore sixteen gold disks as large
 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies 209

Figure 8.15 A
 fine example of skilled metallurgy: A Celtic Iron Age helmet from the bed of the
River Thames in London, 8.07 inches (20.5 centimeters) at the base.
(Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy)

as silver dollars on his chest. There were gold-and-feather headdresses and intricate ear
ornaments, one of a warrior with a movable club.
The Aztecs and the Inka also were talented goldsmiths whose magnificent products
were shipped off to Europe and melted down for royal treasuries in the sixteenth cen-
tury. Spanish conquistadors marveled at the Coricancha, the temple of the sun god
Inti in the Inka capital at Cuzco, high in the Andes. The outside of the beautifully
built stone temple was gilded with gold and silver, while inside lay a garden with
golden clods of earth, golden maize, and golden herdsmen guarding golden llamas
(see Figure 8.16).
The analysis of metal artifacts again involves conventional classificatory techniques
but now relies heavily on technological researches. Again, spectrographic analyses pro-
vide clues as to the sources of raw materials. For example, we know that the copper
ingots from the fourteenth-century b.c. Uluburun shipwreck off southern Turkey came
from Cyprus (see Figure 13.14 on p. 330). Chemical examination of copper and iron
slags and of smelting furnaces can provide valuable information on ancient metallur-
gical processes. Archaeologists have sat alongside and watched as traditional smiths in
Africa and elsewhere re-create ancient smelting and manufacturing techniques. They
record furnace temperatures and other arcane details as a means of better understand-
ing the techniques used in the remote past. The ultimate purpose of the technological
analyses is to reconstruct the entire process of metal tool production from the mining of
the ore to the production of the finished artifact.
210 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies

Figure 8.16 Two silver Inka llamas, which epitomize late Andean artistry in sheet metal.
(Museum of Natural History, New York, USA / Bridgeman Images)

Bone, Wood, Basketry, and Textiles

Bone and Antler
These materials were probably used from the beginnings of human history. The earliest
artifacts apparently consisted of little more than fragments of fractured animal bone
used for purposes that could not be fulfilled by wooden or stone implements. The earli-
est standardized bone tools date from after about 100,000 years ago, but they assumed
much greater levels of sophistication during the late Ice Age, when Homo sapiens used
sharp-edged stone chisels to cut long splinters from antlers and turned them into spear
points, harpoons, and fishing spears, as well as creating many specialized tools for for-
aging, fishing, and ceremonial purposes. They also used antler and bone as palettes
for fine carvings and engravings of animals and geometric designs. The humble bone
or ivory needle appeared about 25,000 years ago, a revolutionary artifact because it
enabled humans to manufacture layered, tailored clothing, essential for colonizing the
bitterly cold open plains of Europe and Eurasia with their nine-month winters.
Bone and ivory technology achieved great sophistication in the Bering Strait area
of the far north, where a highly specialized sea-mammal-hunting toolkit came into
use over 2,000 years ago. Elaborate typological studies have been made of the stylis-
tic and functional changes in such diverse items as harpoons and the winged ivory
 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies 211
objects fastened to the butts of harpoons. Other artifacts include picks made of walrus
tusk and snow shovels and wedges of ivory and bone, as well as drills and domestic
utensils.

Wood
Like bone, wood was used for human artifacts from the earliest times. Only occasion-
ally do such artifacts survive, the earliest being a series of 400,000-year-old long wooden
throwing spears from Schoningen, Germany, that would have been lethal against large
game. The bogs and marshes of northern Europe have preserved entire wooden tool-
kits made by foraging families as early as 7000 b.c., including dugout canoes, fishing
spears, traps, and spear points, and also wooden trackways across waterlogged ground.
The dry conditions of western North America have yielded rich finds of such artifacts
as throwing-sticks and even duck decoys used to pursue waterfowl. Delicately made
furniture survives in pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb.
The manufacture of wooden tools involves such well-understood mechanical pro-
cesses as cutting, whittling, scraping, planing, carving, and polishing. Fire was often
used to harden sharpened spear points. Oil and paint imparted a fine sheen and appear-
ance to all kinds of wooden artifacts. Even more revealing are wood fragments from
abandoned buildings, fortifications, and even track walkways. Microscopic analysis of
wood fragments and charcoal can provide information on the wood types used to build
houses, canoes, and other such objects. On very rare occasions, stone projectile heads and
axes have been recovered in both waterlogged and dry conditions in which their wooden
handles and shafts have survived together with the thongs used to bind stone to wood.
Wood was probably the most important raw material available to our ancestors. The
thousands upon thousands of ground stone axes in the archaeological record all once
had wooden handles (see Figure 11.1 on p. 261). Wood was used for house building,
fortifications, fuel, canoes, and containers. Most skilled woodworking societies used the
simplest technology to produce both utilitarian and ceremonial objects. They used fire
and the ringing of bark to fell trees, stone wedges to split logs, and shells and stones to
scrape spear shafts.

Basketry and Textiles

Basket production is one of the oldest crafts. Basketry includes such items as contain-
ers, matting, bags, and a wide range of fiber objects. Textiles are found in many later
dry sites, and they are well preserved along the Peruvian coast. Some scholars believe
that basketry and textiles are among the most sensitive artifacts for the archaeologist to
work with, culturally speaking, on the grounds that people lived in much more intim-
ate association with baskets and textiles than with clay vessels, stone tools, or houses.
Furthermore, even small fragments of basketry and textiles display remarkable idiosyn-
crasies of individual manufacture. When preserved, baskets are amenable to the same
kinds of functional and stylistic analyses as other artifacts.
The dry climate of the central Peruvian coast has preserved the wardrobes of Paracas
nobles buried between 600 and 150 b.c. Paracas rulers wore mantles, tunics, ponchos,
skirts, loincloths, and headpieces. These garments were embroidered with rows of
brightly colored anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and composite figures (see Figure 8.17).
Interpreting the iconographic patterns that appear on these ancient garments tells us
something of Paracas religious and social customs. One of the important functions of a
Paracas ruler was to mediate between people and the supernatural forces that influenced
212 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies

Figure 8.17 Part of a cotton funerary textile from the Paracas Peninsula, Peru, perhaps depicting a
shaman in trance. Used as a mummy wrapping.
(Vautier / Alamy)

and determined life’s events. Many of the rulers’ garments were adorned with shaman
figures, showing that the wearer had a special relationship with the supernatural.
People have accused archaeologists of being obsessed with the minute details of
artifacts and technology to the exclusion of almost anything else. Doubtless there are
such obsessives among us, but most researchers know that priceless information about
people and human behavior lies behind even simple artifacts. We have only begun to
tap the potential of multidisciplinary research into ancient technologies.

SUMMARY
1. Archaeologists rely heavily on formal classification systems in their analyses of
artifacts.
2. Archaeology has its own taxonomy (classification system) for classifying artifacts
and cultural units. This allows the organizing of data into manageable units and
 Archaeological Classification and Ancient Technologies 213
more detailed classification into artifact types using the individual features of arti-
facts or clusters of tools.
3. Describing types provides a hierarchy that orders the relationships between arti-
facts and allows archaeologists to study assemblage variability in the archaeological
record.
4. Typology is a system of archaeological classification based on the construction of
types to permit comparisons from different levels and sites.
5. Types are distinguished by combinations of artifact features (attributes) that serve
to distinguish one object from another.
6. Statistical methods play an important part in manipulating attribute clusters and
permit researchers to discern patterns that relate to past human behavior. They use
descriptive types, chronological types, functional types, and stylistic types, defined
in this chapter.
7. Archaeologists commonly use arbitrary archaeological units, such as components,
phases (cultures), horizons, and traditions, also defined in this chapter, for studying
larger cultural phenomena.
8. The chapter reviews major technologies of ancient times, including stone, wood,
metal, and bone.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Why is classification important in archaeology?
2. What are the different forms of archaeological types, and how do they differ from
one another?
3. What is a reductive technology, and how does it relate to conchoidal fracture?

FURTHER READING
A general account of artifact analysis for beginners can be found in Charles R. Ewen, Artifacts
(Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2003), the fourth volume in the Archaeologist’s Toolkit series.
V. Gordon Childe, Piecing Together the Past (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956), is still
one of the best accounts of the problems of ordering. So is Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips,
Method and Theory in American Archaeology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), which
describes some of the archaeological units used in the New World. The latest major treatment
is W. Y. Adams and Ernest W. Adams, Archaeological Typology and Practical Reality (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991). For quantitative methods in archaeology, try Stephen
Shennan, Quantifying Archaeology, 2nd edn. (Orlando, FL: Academic Press, 1996), which is intel-
ligible to a beginner. For lithics, see William Andrefsky, Jr., Lithics: Macroscopic Approaches to
Analysis (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006). For ceramics, see Prudence Rice,
Pottery Analysis: A Source-Book (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). James Muhly and
Theodore Wertime, eds., The Coming of the Age of Iron (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1980), is somewhat dated but a good starting point on early metallurgy. For textiles, see Penelope
E. Dooker and Leanne D. Webster, eds., Beyond Cloth and Cordage (Salt Lake City: University of
Utah Press, 2000).
newgenprepdf

9 The Present and the Past

CHAPT ER OU TL I N E
The Archaeological Record Again 217
Site-Formation Processes 218
Preservation 220
Favorable Preservation Conditions 223
Middle-Range Theory and the Archaeological Record 226
The Living Past 228
Ethnographic Analogy 229
Living Archaeology (Ethnoarchaeology) 231
The !Kung San 231
Maya Metates 232
Nunamiut Eskimos 233
Tucson, Arizona: Modern Material Culture and Garbage 233
Experimental Archaeology 235

Maori war canoe drawn in 1769 by Captain James Cook’s artist, Sydney Parkington.
(1Collection / Alamy)
 The Present and the Past 215

PREVIEW
Chapter 9 is concerned with the relationship between the archaeological record of the
past – a static phenomenon – and the present. We discuss the complex site formation
processes that act on a site from the moment that it’s abandoned. Preservation con-
ditions, especially of inorganic finds such as wood and textiles, vary greatly under
different conditions. We describe some notable finds that result from exceptionally
cold, dry, and wet conditions, among them the tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun
and Tollund Man. A body of archaeological theory known as middle-range the-
ory attempts to link the archaeological record with the present. We describe ethno-
graphic analogy, ethnoarchaeology, and experimental archaeology, which are three
approaches that seek to interpret the archaeological record of the past in the context
of the present.
A tiny silk thread on an ancient Egyptian mummy of 1000 b.c., a perfectly preserved
basket from a 500-year-old Indian village in the Pacific Northwest, and a deep-frozen
horsewoman’s grave from Siberia, where even horse trappings survive: These excep-
tional finds and many others show us just how much of the past has vanished in the
soil. The archaeological record is tantalizingly incomplete, for what survives is but a
fragment of what was once fabricated, built, and used.
BF once discovered a series of stone tool scatters on the banks of the Victoria Nile
River in northern Uganda. Thousands of tiny quartz chips and hundreds of discarded
stone arrow barbs marked a site visited again and again by Stone Age hunter-gatherers
over many millennia. Everything organic and perishable had vanished soon after the
visitors departed, leaving only stone tools and the by-products of their manufacture for
the archaeologist to study. There were no traces of the brush shelters where the people
had slept; of their wooden spears, arrow shafts, and digging-sticks; of the skin cloaks
they had used to collect ripe nuts. Sun, rain, wind, even trampling hippopotamuses
feeding at night had leached out the organic remains of human activity or trampled
them into dust. A greater contrast to Austen Henry Layard’s large-scale diggings at
Nineveh in the 1840s is hard to imagine.
Most archaeological sites – the archaeological record – are far from spectacular, yet
they can yield priceless information while the well-preserved finds grab the headlines.
How, then, is this archaeological record formed? What humanly caused and natural fac-
tors affect the preservation of artifacts, food remains, and sites?
So far, we have discussed the basics of archaeology – culture, time and space,
finding and excavating archaeological sites, and the analysis of artifacts and ancient
technology. In Chapter 9, we cross a metaphorical bridge from data recovery to recon-
struction of ancient lifeways, the study of people and their beliefs in the past, and to
the interpretation and explanation of the archaeological record recovered from the
ground. Before crossing to the other bank, we must look more closely at two issues
we have so far left on one side: the nature and formation of the archaeological record
and the all-important factors that affect its preservation for us to study. We argue that
the archaeological record that comes down to us is a static phenomenon, very differ-
ent from the dynamic human behavior that surrounds us today. As we shall see, con-
trolled experiments with modern-day replicas of artifacts and observations of living
people help us interpret the static archaeological record of the past (see the Discovery
box overleaf).
216 The Present and the Past

Discovery
Ancient Pacific Navigation
When British navigator Captain James Cook visited Tahiti in 1769, he puzzled over a ques-
tion that has fascinated scholars ever since. How had the Tahitians colonized their remote
homeland? How had humans with only simple canoes and no metals migrated across
vast tracts of open ocean to settle on the remotest islands of the Pacific? Cook met an
expert Tahitian navigator, Tupaia, and asked him how canoe navigators made their way
from island to island out of sight of land. Tupaia explained how they used the sun as a com-
pass by day and the moon and stars by night. When Cook marveled at the Polynesians’
ability to sail against the prevailing winds for hundreds of miles, Tupaia pointed out that
westerlies blew from November to January, and these were months when canoes could
make good progress to windward. Tupaia carried a mental file of Polynesia in his head.
Modern scholars believe that Tupaia could define an area bounded by the Marquesas in
the northeast, the Tuamotus to the east, the Australs to the south, and the Cook Islands to
the southwest. Even Fiji and Samoa to the west lay within his consciousness, an area as
large as Australia or the United States.
Later explorers did not interview
Tahitian navigators. Many scholars
assumed that canoes blown acciden-
tally far offshore colonized the Pacific
Islands. But in 1965 English small-boat
sailor David Lewis encountered aged
canoe navigators in the Carolina Islands
of Micronesia. He learned how the navi-
gators used the zenith passages of key
stars to navigate far from the land, using
swell direction, waves reflected off dis-
tant land, even the flights of sea and land
birds to make landfall on island archi-
pelagos far from their departure point.
They were also capable of returning to
their homes safely, using the same signs
of sea and sky. Lewis, determined to
preserve a rapidly vanishing art, sailed
his ocean-going, European-designed
catamaran from Rarotonga in the Cook
Islands to New Zealand using only a
star map and a Polynesian navigator to
help him. In the 1970s, Lewis appren-
ticed himself to the pilots of the Carolina
Islands, learning how they made pas-
sages with the aid of sun, moon, stars,
cloud and swell formations, and even by
Figure 9.1 Pacific navigation. The double- watching passing birds.
hulled Hokule’a off the island In the late 1960s, anthropologist Ben
of Oahu, Hawaii. The canoe is Finney began long-term experiments with
a mix of traditional Polynesian replicas of ancient Polynesian canoes.
designs. Finney’s first replica was Nalehia, a 40-foot
(Douglas Peebles Photography / Alamy) copy of a Hawaiian royal canoe. Tests in
 The Present and the Past 217
Hawaii’s windy waters showed it could sail across the wind, so Finney planned a voyage
from Hawaii to Tahiti and back. His second replica was built from a composite of canoe
designs known throughout the Pacific Islands. Hokule’a is 62 feet (18.89 meters) long, with
double hulls and two crab-claw-shaped sails designed by Hawaiian Herb Kawainui Kane
(see Figure 9.1). Finney, Satawal Island navigator Mau Piailug, and a mainly Hawaiian crew
sailed Hokule’a from Hawaii to Tahiti and back in 1976. This journey was followed by a
two-year voyage around the Pacific using only indigenous pilots. Thanks to the success-
ful Hokule’a experiments, ancient Polynesian navigational skills have been preserved for
posterity.

The Archaeological Record Again

The discards of the past – food remains, structures, and artifacts – are of priceless value
as a means of studying ancient human behavior. These material remains form the arch-
aeological record, the archives used by archaeologists to study the past. The archaeo-
logical record comprises all kinds of archaeological finds, from the pyramids of Giza to
an early human butchery site at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, used nearly 2 million years
ago. California shell mounds, Ohio earthworks, Inka cemeteries in Peru – all are part of
the archaeological record. So are isolated artifacts – the throne of Tutankhamun (“King
Tut”), a wooden religious mask from a midwestern burial mound, and a Polynesian
stone adze.
We seek to find out about prehistoric people from the traces of their activities. The
carcass of a mammoth butchered 20,000 years ago is a mine of information on ancient
hunting practices. Analysis of dried-out seeds or ancient human body feces found in
archaeological sites tells us much about prehistoric diet. What we can find out about the
past is severely limited, however, by the state of preservation of archaeological finds.
Some substances, such as baked clay or stone, will survive indefinitely. But wood, bone,
leather, and other organic materials soon vanish except under waterlogged, frozen, or
exceptionally dry conditions. Everyone has heard of the remarkable tomb of Egyptian
pharaoh Tutankhamun, whose astonishing treasure survived almost intact in the dry
climate of the Nile Valley for more than 3,000 years (see Figure 9.2). This archaeological
record is exceptionally complete and informative. We even know, from the bouquet of
wildflowers laid on his inner coffin, that Tutankhamun’s funeral took place in the spring.
But most archaeological sites are found where only a few durable materials survive.
Constructing the past from these finds is a challenge, the sort of problem faced by the
detective piecing together the circumstances of a crime from a few fragmentary clues.
The analogy is close: Take two spark plugs, a fragment of a china cup, a needle, a grind-
stone, and a candlestick. Imagine someone from Patagonia digging them up in a thou-
sand years’ time and trying to tell you how the makers used the objects. This analysis
is precisely what the archaeologist does in going about the work of being a special type
of anthropologist. The data we amass from surface survey and excavation make up the
archaeological record. As we have seen, the two basic units studied by archaeologists
are sites and artifacts. These come down to us much modified by the ravages of centur-
ies and millennia: the site-formation processes.
218 The Present and the Past

Figure 9.2 T
 he throne of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, one of the many wooden artifacts
recovered from the richest royal sepulcher ever found. Tutankhamun died in his late
teens in about 1323 b . c ., having come to the throne in infancy. During his brief reign,
the worship of the sun god Amun was restored at Thebes after a period of religious
confusion.
(Robert Harding Picture Library Ltd. / Alamy)

Site-Formation Processes
The time machine, which has enchanted generations of readers and moviegoers, is
a fictional artifact for transporting people through time. Although archaeologists
would welcome a time machine, we are satisfied by the remarkable fact that objects
made, used, and deposited in the past survive into the present. We need not go to
the past, for it comes to us.
 The Present and the Past 219
Archaeologist Michael Schiffer’s point (1996: 3) is well taken, for the objects from the
past that survive come down to us in two forms: either as historically documented
artifacts – such as, for example, Orville and Wilbur Wright’s first airplane – or in the
archaeological record as abandoned artifacts like clay vessels or stone axes that are no
longer part of a living society. The past in the form of artifacts does not come down
to us unchanged, for complex processes have acted upon these objects, be they tools,
dwellings, burials, food remains, or other manufactured or humanly modified items.
Archaeologists not only have to study these artifacts but to untangle the many events
and processes that contribute to the great variability in the archaeological record (see
Figure 9.3).
The factors that create the historic and archaeological records are known as
site-formation processes. Site-formation processes are those agencies, natural or cul-
tural, that have transformed the archaeological (or historical) record. There are two
basic forms of site-formation processes: cultural processes and noncultural processes.
Cultural factors are those where human behavior has transformed the archaeological
record. They can vary widely in their impact and intensity. For example, later occupants
of a surface that was a hunter-gatherer camp in the Nile Valley may have been farmers
and goat herders rather than hunters. The foundations of their houses may have cut
deeply into underlying soil, and the hooves of their penned goats may have trampled
on and scattered small stone artifacts lying on the surface.
People also reuse artifacts. To conserve prized tools and valuable raw materials, one
may change the use of an artifact from a knife to a scraper or recycle a projectile point
to another use. Sometimes prestigious or valuable objects become prized heirlooms
passed down from generation to generation or are buried with the dead – as soapstone
pipes and other artifacts were with Hopewell kin leaders in the Midwest more than
2,000 years ago (see Figure 3.2 on p. 62). Reuse, especially of such commodities as build-
ing materials, can become a potent factor in settlements that are occupied for longer
periods of time, where people recycle old bricks and other materials for new dwellings.
The wooden beams used in Southwestern pueblos were recycled again and again, often
generations or even centuries after they were first cut. Then there is the dumping of
trash. Whether underfoot or in secondary locations, trash heaps may form. These heaps
often tend to cluster in specific locations that can be used for many generations, perhaps
in a convenient, abandoned storage pit or an old dwelling. Disposal of the dead can also
be viewed as another form of discard behavior.
Noncultural processes are the events and processes of the natural environment that
affect the archaeological record. Geological processes like erosion cut through archaeo-
logical sites and fragment the archaeological record. The chemical properties of the soil
or bacteria may accelerate the decay of organic remains such as wooden spears or dwell-
ings or may even increase the chances of superb preservation. Rivers may overflow
and inundate a settlement, mantling the abandoned remains with fine silt. Windblown
sands, ice, and even earthworms can disturb the archaeological record.
A great earthquake can topple a settlement in a few minutes, as happened to the
Roman port at Kourion in Cyprus in a.d. 365. David Soren’s excavations revealed poign-
ant scenes of sudden tragedy. The quake struck just before dawn. Moments before, a
young girl had stepped out into a house courtyard to calm a restless mule. The sur-
rounding walls collapsed, killing her and the mule, who were found sprawled under
the debris removed during the excavation. A man and his family perished in bed, the
husband frantically sheltering his wife and young child with his body (see Figure 7.18
220 The Present and the Past
on p. 180). The moment of death and terror was frozen in time for archaeologists to
uncover. It is easy to picture the crashing sounds, the rumbling earth, and the frantic
cries of buried victims that soon gave way to the silence of death.
In short, people decide where to put sites, but geomorphic (noncultural) processes
can determine whether they are preserved or destroyed. Thus, the archaeological record
is no more complete than the geological record.
Whether site-formation processes are cultural or noncultural, the important point
is that one can never take the archaeological record at face value. What the archaeolo-
gist sees in the ground is not necessarily a direct reflection of human behavior. It is not
enough to observe conditions of unusually good preservation or to describe the com-
plex layers of a prehistoric rockshelter. One must also analyze and interpret the ways
in which the archaeological record was formed. As Michael Schiffer put it (1996: 4):

The real time machine, then, is the archaeological process: the principles and pro-
cedures that we as scientists apply to material traces in the historical and archaeo-
logical records. If we desire to obtain views of the past that are closer to reality …
then we must build into our time machine a thorough understanding of formation
processes.

A large component in this hypothetical time machine is that of preservation.

Preservation
The archaeological record is made up, for the most part, of only the most durable arti-
facts, usually in stone or clay. The environment is a hostile place for human artifacts,
causing deterioration and drastic modification to many properties of artifacts, affecting
everything from color and texture to weight, shape, and chemical composition.
The environmental agents of deterioration can be grouped into chemical, physical, and
biological categories. Chemical agents are universal, for the atmosphere contains water
and oxygen, which create many chemical reactions – for example, corrosion of some met-
als. Different water temperatures, irradiation of materials by sunlight, and atmospheric
pollutants all cause chemical reactions. Buried objects are often subject to rapid chem-
ical change, especially as a result of dampness. Soils also contain reactive compounds
such as acids and bases, which contribute to deterioration – acid soils dissolve bones, for
example. Many archaeological deposits are somewhat salty, a condition caused by salts
derived from wood ash, urine, and the neutralization of acids and bases. Such saline con-
ditions can retard some decay but react severely with copper, iron, and silver.
Physical agents of deterioration such as water, wind, sunlight, and earth movement
are also universal. Water is especially potent, for it can tumble artifacts on the shoreline,
sometimes even fracturing them in ways that suggest human intervention. Rainwater
can cascade off roofs and tunnel deep grooves into walls. Cycles of wetness followed
by dryness can crack wood and cause rot, and melting and freezing ice cracks rocks
and concrete. Physical agents operate on small and large scales alike. For example, the
effects of the earthquake at Kourion on Cyprus in a.d. 365 not only flattened the small
port but affected the landscape for miles around.
Living organisms are the main agents of biological decay. Bacteria occur almost
everywhere and are usually the first to colonize dead organic matter and to begin the
 The Present and the Past 221

Figure 9.3 S
 ite-formation processes. It is a great mistake to think of any form of human discard
behavior as random. The archaeologist must decipher the complicated behavioral pro-
cesses – the logic, if you will – behind the accumulation of trash heaps, the disposal
of the dead, and many other activities. In short, the archaeological record is not a safe
place for artifacts, for myriad human activities can disturb them after deposition –
plowing, mining, digging of foundations, land clearance, and even artillery bombard-
ment, to say nothing of pothunting and site looting.
222 The Present and the Past
processes of decay. Fungi also occur widely and are especially destructive to wood and
other plant matter, particularly in warm, damp climates. Beetles, ants, flies, and termites
infest archaeological sites, especially middens and abandoned foods. Dogs, hyenas, and
other such animals gnaw, chew, and scavenge bones and other organic materials from
the surface of abandoned sites and game kills. The fragmentary animal bones scav-
enged by early hominins at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, bore clear signs of hyena teeth, for
the predators had moved in on the abandoned hominin sites as soon as they departed.
Processes within the natural environment affect not only artifacts but the actual phys-
ical sites that form their context in time and space. Archaeologists who spend most of
their time in the field are often known as “dirt archaeologists” because they are always
working with one of the primary constituents of an archaeological site – the soil. The
first human activity at any site takes place on a natural surface, on sediments sitting on
underlying bedrock. Sometimes this sediment was weathered over a long time, and it
may contain pollen grains, plant remains, or other sources of environmental informa-
tion. Some Stone Age and Bronze Age burial mounds in Europe were erected on undis-
turbed soils that contained forest pollen grains, giving a picture of the local environment
at the time of construction. For example, these pollens tell us that a large burial mound
near the famous stone circles at Avebury, England, was located on recently cleared forest
land, close to cultivated fields. The original land surface under another nearby mound
still bore the plow marks from recent cultivation (Figure 9.4).
After a site is abandoned, additional sediments usually accumulate on top of the
archaeological remains – sediments accumulated by wind or water action, such as the
windblown sands that accumulate in the rooms of Southwestern pueblos. The footsteps
of humans and animals as well as burrowing animals, earthworms, wall flakings from
overhanging cliffs, and the deteriorating elements of artifacts and structures contrib-
ute to the alteration of archaeological deposits. Stone Age rockshelters in southwestern
France, for example, were occupied intermittently by hunter-gatherer groups between
15,000 and 50,000 years ago. Some of the larger ones contain densely packed layers of
hearths, ash accumulations, boulders, and decaying structures. Untangling how these
levels were formed is a complex process. Some of the larger rockshelters, like the fam-
ous La Madeleine shelter on the banks of the Vezère River, were occupied for months on
end, especially when salmon were running or during spring and fall reindeer migra-
tions. How does one distinguish longer-term occupation from repeated short visits on
the basis of what remains in the deposits? A myriad of different environmental pro-
cesses contribute to site formation and can transform the archaeological record in ways
that can be mistaken for traces of human behavior.
The preservation of such fragile organic materials as bone, leather, skin, textiles, and
wood depends on their physical environment. Soil and climatic conditions strongly
influence archaeological materials. The inorganic artifacts – stone, baked clay pots,
mud-bricks, gold, copper, and bronze – are preserved best. Much of the surviving arch-
aeological record consists of such durable inorganic materials in the form of human
tools (see Figure 8.12 on p. 203).
Ancient peoples used many organic substances, materials that survive at relatively
few locations. Bone and antler were commonly used by early hunter-gatherers, espe-
cially in Europe some 16,000 years ago. The desert peoples of western North America
relied heavily on plant fibers and baskets for their material culture. Both hard and soft
woods were used for digging-sticks, bows and arrows, and other tools and weapons.
Cotton textiles were much prized in coastal Peru 2,000 years ago. Nearly every human
society collected wild vegetable foods for part of their livelihood. These and traces of
 The Present and the Past 223

Figure 9.4 P
 low marks on a cultivated field buried under a burial mound at South Street, Avebury,
England.

broken animal bones and other food remains are sometimes found when preservation
conditions are favorable.

Favorable Preservation Conditions

What are the most favorable conditions for preservation of archaeological finds? The
fantastically rich tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, who died in 1323 b.c.,
yielded incredible finds, including his personal wooden furniture, much of his cloth-
ing, and the perishable ritual objects that accompanied the dead king to the next world
(see Figure 9.2 on p. 218). Tutankhamun’s tomb is the only pharaoh’s burial ever to be
discovered intact, undisturbed by tomb robbers. The richness of the grave furniture
came as a complete surprise and included not only his personal possessions but his
chariots, broken down in easily assembled parts. (In a recent study, French archaeolo-
gists have reconstructed the chariots and concluded they were drawn by small horses,
even ponies.)
The Moche lords of Sipán in northern coastal Peru were buried under an adobe
clay platform in about a . d. 400. The dry conditions of the Peruvian desert pre-
served their lavishly adorned sepulchers, where three lords lay in graves stratified
one above the other, each wearing their complete ceremonial regalia, including
golden masks and elaborate gold and silver jewelry. We know from scenes painted
on Moche pots that these were warrior-priests who presided over warfare and cere-
monies that involved the sacrifice of prisoners of war. In life, the lords would have
glittered brightly in the sun when they appeared in public, in a dazzling display
of political and spiritual power. They would have seemed like gods on earth (see
Figure 2.6 on p. 43).
224 The Present and the Past
Dry conditions like those of the Nile Valley have led to remarkable discoveries
in the desert of the western United States as well, where caves in Utah and Nevada
have yielded not only moccasins (see Figure 9.5), sandals, bows and arrows, and other
wooden and fiber objects but thousands of seeds and even human excrement (coprolites
or feces), which can be analyzed to give information on prehistoric diet (see Chapter 11).
Waterlogged, flooded sites also aid preservation. They can seal off organic finds in an
oxygen-free atmosphere. Danish archaeologists have found prehistoric dugout canoes
deep in ancient peat bogs, along with leather clothing, traps, and wooden spears. Their
most famous finds are the corpses of sacrificial victims buried in the bogs more than
2,000 years ago. We can gaze on the serene countenance of Tollund Man. His corpse is in
such excellent condition that we know he had not eaten for at least twenty-four hours
before his death and that his last meal was a porridge of barley and wild grasses (see
Figure 9.6).
Richard Daugherty gained unusual insights into ancient whale hunting on the
Northwest Coast of North America by digging a Makah Indian village at Ozette,
Washington, long buried by sudden mud slides. The wet mud crushed cedar plank
houses by the ocean, sealing their contents from the destructive effects of the atmos-
phere. The Ozette village was occupied for more than 2,000 years, right into the twen-
tieth century. The buried houses provided a wealth of information about Makah life
and artistic traditions of centuries ago. The thick mud preserved walls and beams,
sleeping benches, and fine mats. Wooden fishhooks, seal-oil bowls, cedar storage
boxes, and whaling harpoons were uncovered by using fine pressurized water jets to
wash mud from the soft wood. The most remarkable find of all was a whale fin carved
out of red cedar and inlaid with sea otter teeth, a unique ritual object without parallel
in North America. Waterlogged conditions can also preserve complete field systems
and trackways built across marshy ground. The celebrated Neolithic and Bronze Age
trackways that survive in the peats of the low-lying Somerset Levels in southwestern
England can be dated precisely by dendrochronology (see Figure 9.7).
Fortunate is the archaeologist who finds a site with conditions as good as those at
Ozette. They are very much the exception rather than the rule. Arctic cold and perma-
frost can literally refrigerate the past and preserve the minutest details of clothing, even
skin tattoos. In 1993, Russian archaeologist Natalya Polosmak excavated an undis-
turbed burial chamber on the Ukok Plateau of southern Siberia, once home to ancient
herders from the sixth to second centuries b.c. The chamber contained an ice-filled log
coffin, which Polosmak thawed by pouring hot water onto it for days. The casket con-
tained the body of a twenty-five-year-old woman wearing an elaborate headdress. The
woman, 5 feet 6 inches (168 centimeters) tall, had been laid to rest on her side, her strong
hands crossed in front of her. The still-soft skin of one shoulder bore an intricate tattoo
of a mythical creature. Her burial robe included a woolen skirt of horizontal white and
maroon stripes and a yellow silk top, perhaps from China, which mantled her shoul-
ders. A wooden-handled mirror lay by the body. Nearby were the remains of horses that
had been led to the graveside, dispatched with swift ax blows, then laid in the pit next
to their mistress.
Everyone has heard of Roman Herculaneum and Pompeii – entire towns over-
whelmed in a.d. 79 by an eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius. The volcanic ash and
lava buried both communities, even preserving the body casts of fleeing victims (see
Figure 9.8). Such sites are rare, but when they are discovered they yield remarkable
finds. In the sixth century a.d., a volcanic eruption in a nearby river suddenly bur-
ied a small Maya village at Cerén in San Salvador. The people had eaten their evening
meal but had not yet gone to bed. They abandoned their houses and possessions and
 The Present and the Past 225

Figure 9.5 Perfectly preserved moccasins.

(Werner Forman / Universal Images Group / Getty Images)

fled for their lives. Not only did the ash bury the village, it also smothered the nearby
crops, burying corn, manioc, and agave plants as they stood in the fields. Payson Sheets
and his research team have recovered entire dwellings and outhouses, and the artifacts
within them, just as they were when abandoned. Each Cerén household had one build-
ing for eating, sleeping, and other activities, and a storehouse, a kitchen, and sometimes
other structures (see Figure 9.9).
Substantial thatched roofs projected far beyond the walls, providing not only cov-
ered walkways but places for processing grain and for storage. Each household stored
grain in clay vessels with tight lids, suspended some corn and chilis from the roof, and
kept sharp knives in the rafters. The excavations have uncovered outlying maize fields
where the plants were doubled over, with the ears still attached to the stalk, a “storage”
technique still used in parts of Central America today. Judging from the mature maize
plants, the eruption occurred at the end of the growing season, in August. Cerén pro-
vides an unusually complete look at life in a humble Maya settlement far removed from
the great ceremonial centers where the elite lived.
However, as we have said, most archaeological sites yield only a fraction of the organic
materials buried in them. The fortunate archaeologist may recover not only manufac-
tured tools but some food remains as well – animal bones or a handful of shells, seeds,
or other vegetable remnants – but only rarely does anything more survive. Obviously
the picture one obtains of the inhabitants at such a site is incomplete compared with that
from Cerén or Ozette. This makes the problem of bridging the gap between past and
present of the greatest importance.
226 The Present and the Past

Figure 9.6 T
 he head of Tollund Man, whose remarkably well-preserved corpse was discovered in
the peat bogs of Denmark. He was probably a ritual sacrifice and is now preserved in
the National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen.
(Robert Harding World Imagery / Alamy)

Middle-Range Theory and the Archaeological Record

The archaeological record is static, whereas the present is ever-changing and dynamic.
How, then, does one study the relationship between the static and dynamic, between
the past and the present? This issue is of critical importance to archaeology, for most
of our research is based on the assumption that because an artifact is used in a spe-
cific way, it was used in that way millennia before. This assumed relationship has
two parts:

1. The past is dead and knowable only through the present – by archaeologists
studying it.
2. Accurate knowledge of the present is essential to understanding the past.

Middle-range theory comprises methods, theories, and ideas that can be applied to
any period and anywhere in the world to explain what we have discovered, excavated,
or analyzed from the past. The general concept comes from sociology and describes a
body of theory that is being formed as archaeologists try to bridge the gap between what
actually happened in the past and the archaeological record of today. Lewis Binford and
other archaeologists have searched for “Rosetta Stones” that permit one to use obser-
vations of the static past to make statements about its long-vanished dynamics. They
Figure 9.7 A reconstruction of a trackway in the Somerset Levels, England.
(MS Bretherton / Alamy)

Figure 9.8 B
 odies smothered at Pompeii, Italy, recovered from a cavity in the volcanic ash with
plaster of Paris.
(porojnicu / iStock by Getty Images)
228 The Present and the Past

Figure 9.9 A Maya house at Cerén, El Salvador.

(J. Enrique Molina / Alamy)

believe middle-range theory provides the conceptual tools for explaining artifact pat-
ternings and other material phenomena from the archaeological record.
Middle-range research is important to archaeology, whether one believes that this
research is meant to specify the relationships between behavior and material remains or
to understand the determinants of patterning and structural properties of the archaeo­
logical record. It is conducted by ethnographic analogy, by studying living societies
(ethnoarchaeology), or by using historical documents or controlled experiments
(experimental archaeology).
By no means all archaeologists agree that the archaeological record holds no dir-
ect information on human behavior. Many argue that the relationship between human
behavior and material culture in all times and places is what archaeology is all about.
The controversy continues, but it is safe to say that ethnoarchaeology and experimental
research, as well as analogy, have leading roles in today’s research into the past.

The Living Past

We live in a world inhabited by an astonishing diversity of human societies. A century
ago, many of them were still living in much the same way as their prehistoric ances-
tors. But the unchanging routine of planting and harvest, of life and death, of the sea-
sons of game and vegetable foods, has withered in the face of Western exploration and
 The Present and the Past 229
industrial civilization. Today, few of these societies still enjoy their traditional lifeways.
Many are extinct. The Tasmanians effectively vanished within seventy years of white
settlement; the Indians of Tierra del Fuego disappeared in the 1950s (see Figure 9.10).
Ishi, one of the last California hunter-gatherers, managed to live in his home territory in
the northern California foothills until 1911. He saw all of his companions wiped out by
white settlers. The surviving Indian peoples of the Amazon region are rapidly fading
away in the face of large-scale mining operations that are decimating their rain-forest
environment.
Anthropology has traditionally worked with non-Western societies and with peo-
ples who have had to make far-reaching adjustments to encroaching industrial civil-
ization. Anthropologists have followed the fates of these people as they have adjusted,
often becoming impoverished minorities in large industrial cities. Since the nineteenth
century, many of the societies once studied by anthropologists have, by their death or
transformation, become part of the archaeological record. No longer living groups, they
have left behind them surface scatters of artifacts and sites that are now the only chron-
icle of their societies other than early historical records, oral traditions, or anthropo-
logical studies of some generations ago. In short, they have become human cultures of
the past.
For years, archaeologists talked about an “ethnographic present,” a moment in
time when a non-Western society first came in contact with Europeans, such as when
Captain James Cook landed on Tahiti in the South Pacific in 1769. They tended to think
of Tahitian culture, and other cultures for that matter, as frozen like time capsules,
when, in fact, these cultures had changed continually for centuries and still changed
after European contact. There has never been an ethnographic present, but archaeolo-
gists have long recognized the value of records of such societies as a way of interpreting
much older cultures. They approach the problem by using ethnographic analogy and
ethnoarchaeology.

Ethnographic Analogy
Early anthropologists collected vast quantities of information on traditional mater-
ial culture of diverse societies all over the world. This material gave archaeologists a
chance to compare still-living peoples and prehistoric peoples who had a basically simi-
lar technology. Thus, it was argued, the African San, Australian Aborigines, and other
living hunter-gatherers who had no metals could be considered living representatives
of prehistoric, stone-using hunter-gatherers. Under this approach, an archaeologist who
dug a 20,000-year-old campsite in an arctic environment could turn to the Eskimo of
today for comparative modern material. They believed that Eskimo and arctic Stone
Age cultures bore remarkable similarities, on the grounds that they adapted to the same
environment.
This type of reasoning was obviously simplistic, because each human society, ancient
or modern, has, or has had, its own distinctive adaptation to its environment, which
helps shape all aspects of its culture in many ways. For example, some 15,000 years ago,
the late Ice Age Magdalenian hunter-gatherers of southwestern France were expert
reindeer hunters, whose sustenance relied heavily on the seasonal migrations of these
animals. Similarly, modern subarctic hunter-gatherer groups in northern Canada live
off migrating herds of caribou, a close relative of the reindeer. The late Ice Age environ-
ment of southwestern France and that of the Canadian subarctic are radically different,
as are the technologies each group uses or used. It would be naive indeed to claim that
230 The Present and the Past

Figure 9.10 A Fuegian (Ona) woman making a basket.

(National Geographic Image Collection / Alamy)

the Magdalenians of 18,000 years ago were prehistoric examples of modern subarctic
caribou hunters, although, obviously, there are some superficial resemblances. There
are, after all, only a limited number of ways of killing a caribou or reindeer with
a spear.
Archaeologists then began to make analogies with recent societies in new ways. They
worked back from known, living peoples into earlier times. They began by digging sites
of historically documented Indians and studying their contents, making full use of his-
torical records to interpret their finds. Thus, photographs of Northwest Coast Indian
homes taken in 1890 would be compared with excavated home foundations from com-
paratively recent times, say, a.d. 1500. If the features of both were the same, then it
was reasonable to interpret the design of prehistoric houses from this model. The house
would then be traced backward into prehistoric times in sites many centuries earlier
than the historic settlements.
This method, very simply stated, is the basis on which archaeologists use ethnographic
records to interpret prehistoric artifacts and sites. Considerable controversy surrounds
such interpretations, for sophisticated research methods are needed if comparisons are
to be made between modern artifact patternings and those found in prehistoric sites.
 The Present and the Past 231
For this reason many archaeologists believe that “living archaeology” (or ethnoarchae-
ology) is a more effective approach.

Living Archaeology (Ethnoarchaeology)

Much of the ethnographic material available to archaeologists was collected when
anthropology was much less sophisticated than it is today. Very often ethnographers
collected object after object or information on customs without recording detailed
information on settlement layout or artifact patternings, the types of information
that archaeologists now need so badly. One can hardly blame the pioneers, for they
were out to record as much information about vanishing cultures as they could before
it was too late, and subtle settlement details hardly seemed a high priority. Today,
many of the settlements the anthropologists studied have themselves become arch-
aeological sites. They are now virtually indistinguishable from prehistoric sites with
their middens and crumbled hut foundations. They offer a unique opportunity to
study the processes by which abandoned settlements turn into archaeological sites.
Understanding these processes makes archaeological interpretation in general much
easier, and so some archaeologists have gone out in the field to study “living archae-
ology” for themselves.
This form of living archaeology came into its own during the 1970s, with studies
of both African San hunter-gatherers and Nunamiut caribou hunters in Alaska. More
recent research has focused on such hunter-gatherer groups as the Hazda of northern
Tanzania; on farming societies such as the Kalinga of the Philippines; and on several
southwestern Asian groups. By living in, say, an Eskimo hunting camp and observing
the activities of its occupants, the archaeologist hopes to record archaeologically observ-
able patterns, knowing what activities brought them into existence. Sometimes historical
documents can be used to amplify observations in the field. The earliest ethnoarchaeo-
logical work focused on specific artifact patternings and on studies of hunter-gatherer
encampments that might provide ways of interpreting the very earliest human sites at
Olduvai Gorge and elsewhere. But a major focus of later work has been to develop arch-
aeological methods of inference that bridge the gap between past and present.
Many archaeologists regard ethnoarchaeology as simply a mass of observed data on
human behavior from which they can draw up suitable hypotheses to compare with
the finds from their excavations and laboratory analyses. This interpretation is totally
wrong, for in fact ethnoarchaeological research deals with dynamic processes in the
modern world.

The !Kung San

Anthropologist Richard Lee, who spent many years studying the !Kung San of southern
Africa, took archaeologist John Yellen with him on one of his expeditions. (The ‘!’ sym-
bol denotes a click sound made with the tongue against the roof of the mouth.) Yellen
spent many months studying the ways in which the San butchered animals and the
fragmentary bones that resulted from butchery, cooking, and eating (see Figure 9.11).
He drew plans of recently abandoned sites of known age, recorded the positions of
houses, hearths, and occupation debris, and talked to people who had lived there as
232 The Present and the Past

Figure 9.11 Living archaeology. A !Kung San brush shelter and windbreak in the Kalahari Desert,
southern Africa.
(Neil Harris / Alamy)

a way of establishing precise population estimates and the social relationships of the
inhabitants.
Yellen found that the San camps developed their layouts through conscious acts, such
as building a shelter or a hearth, as well as through such casual deeds as discarding ani-
mal bones and debris from toolmaking. There were communal areas that everyone used
and private family areas gathered around hearths. Some activity areas, such as places
where women cracked nuts in the heat of the day, were simply located under a conveni-
ent shady tree. Yellen recorded that most food preparation took place in family areas.
Most activities in San camps were related to individual families. Theoretically, therefore,
one should be able to study the development of the family through time by studying
changing artifact patternings. To do so in practice, of course, requires very comprehen-
sive data and carefully formulated research designs.

Maya Metates
When archaeologist Brian Hayden was examining Maya stone tools of the
post-Conquest colonial period near the Mexico–Guatemala border, he discovered that
some present-day Mayan-speaking communities still made and used stone grind-
ers and pounders – metates and manos – in the traditional way. Hayden designed a
broad-based research project to examine the properties of the stone collected for tool
manufacture, the efficiency of stone technology, and the evolution of the forms of stone
 The Present and the Past 233
tools as they were used and reused. He worked closely with a fifty-year-old metate
maker named Ramon Ramos Rosario. Hayden followed Rosario through the entire
manufacturing process, from the selection of the material to the final surface smooth-
ing of the artifact (see Figure 9.12). Time and motion studies showed that it took this
expert two and a half days to rough out and smooth a metate blank using only stone
tools and four and a half to five and a half days to finish both a metate and a mano.
Finally, Hayden examined the characteristics of the picks used to chip and peck the
rock as if they were archaeological finds, combining these studies with use-wear ana-
lysis. Hayden seriated the picks on the basis of the intensity of edge-wear development
and as a way of estimating the relative length of use of comparable tools. He compared
his results to prehistoric artifacts and was able to show that many blunt-edged Maya
woodworking tools in archaeological sites were probably used by women to roughen
used manos and metates.
The Hayden study demonstrates the power and potential of a many-sided approach
to ethnoarchaeology, using data from the dynamic present to evaluate archaeological
evidence from the static archaeological record.

Nunamiut Eskimos
In another instance, Lewis Binford’s study of the Nunamiut caribou hunters of Alaska
was designed to learn as much as possible about an Eskimo group’s hunting practices.
The Nunamiut depended heavily on meat, supplementing their flesh diet with the par-
tially digested contents of caribou stomachs and about a cupful of vegetable foods a
year. They relied extensively on stored food for eight and a half months a year, fresh
meat being freely available for only about two months. Binford soon found that the
Nunamiut food-procurement strategy was based on complicated decisions that involved
not only the distribution of food at different seasons but the storage potential of differ-
ent animals and their parts, as well as the logistics of procurement, carrying, and stor-
ing meat. Was it easier to move people to the herds or to carry meat back to base? His
research convinced him that the linkages between the facts of animal anatomy and the
realities of lifeway strategies held the key to meaningful analysis of animal bones.
Binford studied the annual round of the Nunamiut and also their butchery and stor-
age strategies, developing indexes to measure utilization of different body parts. He
also compared observations from modern kill sites to forty-two archaeologically known
locations that dated to earlier times. The Nunamiut research is valuable not only for the
large body of empirical data it generated but also because it showed just how locally
confined any cultural adaptation is.
The Nunamiut research and other ethnoarchaeological projects serve as a caution-
ary tale, for they show that differences in artifacts and human behavior at different
locations can result from entirely local considerations and not necessarily from cultural
differences.

Tucson, Arizona: Modern Material Culture

and Garbage
Although ethnoarchaeological investigations have tended to focus on hunter-gatherers,
there are numerous instances of fascinating research on more complex societies, even
our own. William Rathje’s major long-term study of modern urban garbage in Tucson,
Arizona, for example, is based on the latest archaeological methods and research
234 The Present and the Past

Figure 9.12 Ramon Ramos Rosario making a stone metate.

(Professor Brian Hayden, Simon Fraser University)

designs. The project is designed to investigate the relationships between resource man-
agement, urban demography, and social and economic stratification in a modern con-
text, where control data from interviews and other perspectives are available to amplify
an archaeological study of a type that might be conducted at an ancient urban center.
The Tucson garbage study has produced remarkable results, showing widely different
patterns of resource management from one segment of the city’s population to another,
with the middle class being the most wasteful.
There are numerous other examples of ethnoarchaeology from around the world.
Notable are studies of pottery in the Philippines, where studies of living potters have
provided data on the variation between handmade vessels as a basis for studying such
variation in sites like Southwestern pueblos. Other studies, notably on Luzon Island,
have examined the reasons why potters create vessels in different colors. For example,
black pots stand out in the marketplace; laboratory tests showed that blackened pots
cook more efficiently than some other types. Some of the most effective ethnoarchaeo-
logical researches combine observations of living peoples with controlled experiments –
experimental archaeology. This has been a particularly effective way of studying ancient
toolmaking technologies.
 The Present and the Past 235

Experimental Archaeology
Archaeologists love experimenting with the past. One ardent early experimenter,
Robert Ball of Dublin, Ireland, blew a prehistoric horn so hard that he produced a
sound like a bellowing bull. Unfortunately, his heroic effort caused him to burst a blood
vessel and die. Not all experimental archaeology is so risky, however. Archaeologists
have been making stone implements, floating over oceans on rafts, and trying to
re-create the past ever since the eighteenth century. Some of their achievements are
remarkable.
Louis Leakey, the famous Stone Age archaeologist, not only dug early hominin
sites but also spent many years perfecting his skills as a stone toolmaker. He could
shape a perfect prehistoric hand ax and skin an antelope with it in a few minutes – a
favorite demonstration at conferences. One of the most remarkable experiments of all
was Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947, in which he attempted
to prove that Polynesia had been settled by adventurous Peruvians who had sailed
balsa rafts across thousands of miles of ocean. Heyerdahl did succeed in reaching
Polynesia in a balsa raft. His expedition merely proved, however, that long ocean voy-
ages in Kon-Tiki-type rafts were possible. He did not prove that the Peruvians settled
Polynesia.
People have cleared thick Danish woodland with stone axes and grown prehistoric
crops in the American Southwest under conditions identical to those of centuries ago.
The latter experiments lasted seventeen years. Good crop yields were obtained in all
but two years, when drought killed the young crops. Experiments in living the prehis-
toric lifestyle have proved popular, especially in Britain and Denmark, where television
networks have financed long-term experiments with volunteer “prehistoric peoples.”
One British experiment centered on several families who were provided with crops
and livestock and isolated in a reconstruction of an Iron Age village of about 200 b . c .
They were left alone to survive for a year, the only concession being modern antibiotics
and birth control pills. Such experiments are of questionable scientific value, but they
do provide superficial insights into the realities of prehistoric life. More serious are
controlled burnings of some faithful reconstructions of ancient houses, to show what
structures would look like when reduced to ashes – as such dwellings are in many
actual sites. British archaeologists have even built an entire experimental earthwork
that they are digging up at regular intervals over 128 years. The resulting information
on soil decay and artifact preservation will be invaluable for interpreting equivalent
prehistoric sites.
Many recent experimenters have concentrated on replicating such phenomena
as wear on the working edges of prehistoric stone tools. Lawrence Keeley and other
researchers have examined stone artifacts such as Paleo-Indian points under high- and
low-power microscopes. They are now able to distinguish between wear polishes asso-
ciated with different materials, including wood, bone, and hide. This approach is now
reliable enough to discern whether a tool was used to slice wood, cut up vegetables,
or strip meat from bones. Sometimes, edge-wear studies can yield remarkable results,
especially when combined with refitting – reassembling flakes with the parent core from
which they were struck. These techniques enabled Daniel Cahen and Lawrence Keeley
to identify the left-handed stoneworker at Meer, Belgium, mentioned in Chapter 8.
By reassembling some of the stone flakes and cores, studying the wear patterns on
tool-working edges, and examining distribution of stone fragments throughout the site,
236 The Present and the Past
they were able to show that two people, one of them left-handed, had made some tools
used to bore and shape fragments of bone.
In this and in many other innovative projects, archaeologists are using the present to
better understand the past, attempting to overcome the limitations imposed on us by
the archaeological record and the formation processes that have affected it.

SUMMARY
1. The archaeological record is affected by complex site formation processes such as
human activities and soil chemistry.
2. Preservation conditions depend upon climate and oil conditions. Arid and very
cold conditions, as well as waterlogged soils, offer the best opportunities for the
preservation of organic remains such as corpses, soft tissue, textiles, and wood.
3. The archaeological record is static, whereas the present is ever-changing and
dynamic.
4. Archaeologists assume that the past is dead and knowable only through the present
by archaeologists studying it. They use middle-range theory: methods, theories,
and ideas that can be applied to any period and anywhere in the world to explain
what they have discovered about the past.
5. This body of theory derived from ethnographic analogy, ethnoarchaeology, the study
of living cultural systems, and controlled experiments is used to bridge the gap
between what actually happened in the past and the archaeological record today.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Why are site formation processes important in archaeology?
2. Why is middle-range theory important in archaeology? How does it help archaeo-
logical interpretation?
3. What light does ethnoarchaeology throw on ancient societies? Use examples from
this chapter.

FURTHER READING
Site-formation processes: Michael Schiffer, Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record
(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1996), is a good starting point. For preservation,
Nicholas Reeves, The Complete Tutankhamun (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990), tells
you all you want to know about the boy pharaoh and more. Walter Alva and Christopher
Donnan, The Royal Tombs of Sipán (Los Angeles: Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1992),
is a comprehensive account of one of the most spectacular archaeological discoveries of
the twentieth century. P. V. Glob, The Bog People (London: Faber and Faber, 1969), describes
a number of well-preserved prehistoric corpses from waterlogged Danish bogs; even the
skin and intestines survive. The remarkable Ozette site is described by Ruth Kirk, with
Richard Daugherty, in Hunters of the Whale (New York: Morrow, 1975). Payson D. Sheets,
The Cerén Site (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1992), offers a clear and well-written
account of this remarkable site. Middle-range theory is best summarized by Lewis Binford,
In Pursuit of the Past, rev. edn. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). His Nunamiut
Eskimo Ethnoarchaeology (New York: Academic Press, 1977) is a detailed account of his own
attempts to grapple with issues of middle-range theory and ethnoarchaeology. For liv-
ing archaeology, see Nicholas David and Carol Kramer, eds., Ethnoarchaeology in Action
 The Present and the Past 237
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001). John Coles, Archaeology by Experiment
(London: Hutchinson University Press, 1973) and Stephen C. Saraydar, Replicating the Past
(Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2008), cover this intriguing subject. For a project
combining both approaches, see Michael T. Searcy, The Life-Giving Stones: Ethnoarchaeology of
Maya Metates (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2011).
newgenprepdf

10 Ancient Climate and

Environment

CHAPT ER OU TL I N E
Short-Term and Long-Term Climatic Change 241
Long-Term Climatic Change: The Great Ice Age 241
Deep-Sea Cores and Ice Cores 242
The Pleistocene Framework 244
Pollen Analysis 247
Short-Term Climatic Change: The Holocene 249
Centuries-Long Changes: The Younger Dryas and the Black Sea 249
Short-Term Climatic Change: El Niño 250
The Moche Civilization 251
Tree Rings: Studying Southwestern Drought 253
Geoarchaeology 256

An ice-core sample from the Langjokull Ice Cap, Iceland.

(ARCTIC IMAGES / Alamy)
 Ancient Climate and Environment 239

PREVIEW
Human societies have adapted to changing environments and long- and short-term cli-
mate change since before the Ice Age began some 1.5 million years ago. In recent years,
a revolution in the study of ancient climate change using deep-sea cores and ice cores, as
well as tree-ring and pollen analysis, has made it possible to look at ancient human soci-
eties in the context of such changes on a much more detailed scale. Chapter 10 describes
the major events of the Ice Age, then the Holocene, and also the major climatological
approaches for studying them. We discuss the impacts of El Niños and droughts on
societies like the Moche of the Andes and the Ancestral Pueblo of the Southwest. The
multidisciplinary science of geoarchaeology is of central importance in studying cli-
matic change in the past.
In 4500 b.c. , a patch of woodland in northern England boasted mature oak, ash, and
elm trees interspersed with occasional patches of open grassland and swamp. In 3820
b.c., some foragers set fire to the forest to encourage fresh green shoots for feeding deer.
Birch and bracken now appeared. About thirty years passed before the landscape was
cleared even more. Judging from numerous charcoal fragments, fire swept through the
undergrowth, leaving fine ash to fertilize the soil. Now wheat pollen and that of a culti-
vation weed named Plantago lanceolata appeared. Fifty years of wheat farming ensued.
These years saw only two fires, one after six years, the other nineteen years after that.
Then seventy years passed, during which agriculture ceased and the land stood vacant.
Hazel, birch, and alder became more common and oak resurged as woodland rapidly
gained ground.
This scenario of brief clearance, slash-and-burn agriculture, then abandonment and
regeneration was repeated at thousands of locations in ancient Europe in the early years
of Stone Age farming. Over a few centuries, the natural environment of mixed oak for-
est was transformed beyond recognition by gardens and domesticated animals. Until
a few years ago, we could only have guessed at these environmental changes. Today,
fine-grained pollen analysis and other highly sophisticated methods allow the recon-
struction of even short-lived climatic and environmental changes in the remote past.
Archaeology is unique in its ability to study culture change over very long periods of
time. By the same token, it is a multidisciplinary science that also studies human interac-
tions with the natural environment over centuries and millennia. Chapter 10 describes
some of the ways archaeologists study long- and short-term environmental change from
a multidisciplinary perspective.

Discovery
Moche Human Sacrifice and El Niño, Huaca de la Luna,
Peru, Sixth to Seventh Century A.D.
Human sacrifice was commonplace in pre-Columbian states, among them the Aztecs and
the Inka. Early Spanish accounts of these societies abound with stories of people being
burned alive, flayed, decapitated, or having their hearts ripped out. Archaeological evi-
dence for such practices is fairly rare, which makes a dramatic find of a Moche sacrifice of
1,400 years ago of unusual importance.
240 Ancient Climate and Environment

Figure 10.1 D ecapitated human

sacrifice ­victims,
Huaca de la
Luna, Peru.
(National Geographic Image
Collection / Alamy)

The Moche state controlled at least

ten coastal valleys along the north
coast of what is now Peru during
the mid-first millennium A.D. A small
elite of fierce warrior-priests built on
the political and religious traditions
of earlier Andean societies to create
a complex and very wealthy society
based on irrigation agriculture and
far-flung trade with highland neigh-
bors. The nobility, probably a net-
work of princely families, ruled from
imposing temple complexes based
on adobe pyramids built by thou-
sands of commoners, who paid trib-
ute to the state by compulsory labor,
known in later centuries as mi’ta, an
ancient Andean tradition. Much of
what we know about Moche society
comes not from written texts – theirs
was a civilization without writing – but from their flamboyant visual culture expressed
in ceramics, metal artifacts, wooden sculptures, textiles, and wall paintings. A great
deal of this visual culture is concerned with warfare, captured prisoners, and human
sacrifice.
The greatest Moche center lay at the Huacas de Moche site, dominated by two huge
pyramids named after the sun and moon. Huaca de la Luna, the Temple of the Moon,
has been under continual investigation since 1991 by Peruvian archaeologists Santiago
Uceda and Ricardo Morales (see Figure 10.9 on p. 252). While excavating a plaza in a
secluded area of the temple, Steve Bourget uncovered a precinct surrounded by high
adobe walls, built in the sixth or seventh century A.D., where about seventy male war-
riors were sacrificed. Many of them were subsequently dismembered in the course of
at least five different ritual events. After their sacrifice, the body parts of the victims
were scattered around the ritual area, some of them accompanied by deliberately bro-
ken clay statuettes of named men, their bodies covered with elaborate symbols (see
Figure 10.1). These were three-dimensional representations of individuals depicted in
fine paintings.
What do these sacrifices mean? They may be ritual killings of prisoners of war, a fre-
quent motif in Moche art, and one well documented by the burials of the lords of Sipán,
dating to about A.D. 400 (see Figure 3.4 on p. 64). Bourget originally believed that the
dead men were indeed casualties of a ritual battle, staged to placate the unknown forces
that unleashed strong El Niños on Moche domains. But after further study, he realized
that El Niños were, in fact, already fully integrated into Moche religion and ideology. The
pectorals, bracelets, and other ornaments worn by the Sipán lords, and looted from other
tombs, prominently depict exotic animals like the Peruvian eagle ray and swimming crabs
 Ancient Climate and Environment 241
that only arrived off the north coast when the El Niño counter-current was flowing. The
elite also wore depictions of local species affected by El Niño events such as octopuses,
catfish, seabirds, and sea lions. The temple walls of Huaca de la Luna and other shrines
also bear painted reliefs of animals associated with El Niños. Bourget theorizes that
Moche rulers responded to the threat of El Niños by associating their authority with the
awesome power of such events, which could transform the marine environment. When
an El Niño event brought torrential rains that washed away entire irrigation systems and
decimated the anchovy fisheries, the rulers used the occasion to reinforce their authority
at times of crisis. They already wore the iconography of such events on their bodies and
caused it to be displayed on temples and on ritual vessels (see Figure 2.6 on p. 43). Their
authority came from their perceived unique relationship with the powers of the supernat-
ural, reinforced by human sacrifice. So they used the immolation of the seventy sacrificial
victims in this particular plaza, and probably in others, to reinforce their power and to
maintain social solidarity in such times of crisis.

Short-Term and Long-Term Climatic Change

Climatic change comes in many forms. The long cycles of cold and warm associated
with the Ice Age occur on a millennial scale and have little more than long-term effects
on human existence. For example, the existence of a low-lying land bridge between
Siberia and Alaska during much of the late Ice Age may have allowed humans to forage
their way from Asia into the Americas before 15,000 years ago, but the actual formation
of the shelf that linked the two continents would have taken many centuries and human
generations. Short-term climatic change, such as the floods or droughts caused by El
Niño episodes or volcanic eruptions dumping ash into the atmosphere, are another
matter. Memories of catastrophic famines and other events associated with such events
would have endured for generations, for they had immediate impact on hundreds, if
not thousands, of people. Through human history, people have developed strategies to
deal with sudden climatic shifts bringing drought, hunger, or unexpected food short-
ages. Humans have always been brilliant opportunists, capable of improvising solu-
tions to unexpected problems caused by environmental change. Thus environmental
reconstruction and climatic change are two major concerns for archaeologists wherever
they work.

Long-Term Climatic Change: The Great Ice Age

About 1.8 million years ago, global cooling marked the beginning of the Pleistocene
epoch, more popularly called the Great Ice Age. Together with the Holocene, which
began about 15,000 years ago, it forms part of the Quaternary epoch. The Pleistocene
was remarkable for dramatic swings in world climate. On numerous occasions dur-
ing the Pleistocene, great ice sheets covered much of western Europe and North
America, bringing arctic climate to vast areas of the Northern Hemisphere. Scientists
have identified at least eight major glacial episodes over the past 780,000 years, alter-
nating with shorter warm periods when the world’s climate was sometimes warmer
than today. The general pattern is cyclical, with slow coolings culminating in a rela-
tively short period of intense cold, followed by rapid warming. For 75 percent of the
past three-quarters of a million years, the world’s climate has been in transition from
242 Ancient Climate and Environment
one extreme to another. We ourselves still live in the Ice Age, in a warm intergla-
cial period. If the current scientific estimates are correct and humanly caused global
warming does not interfere, we will probably begin to enter another cold phase in
about 23,000 years.
No one knows exactly what causes the climatic fluctuations of the Ice Age, but
they are connected with oscillations in the intensity of solar radiation and the trajec-
tory of the earth around the sun. But such climatic changes are of great importance
to archaeologists, for they form a long-term environmental backdrop for the early
chapters of our past. Although almost no human beings lived on, or very close to,
the great ice sheets that covered so much of the Northern Hemisphere, they did live
in regions affected by geological phenomena associated with the ice sheets: coastal
areas, lakes, and river flood-plains. When human artifacts are found in direct associ-
ation with Pleistocene geological features of this type, it is sometimes possible to tie
in archaeological sites with the relative chronology of Pleistocene events derived from
geological strata.

Deep-Sea Cores and Ice Cores

Our knowledge of Ice Age climatic change comes from many sources, including
geological strata such as glacial deposits and ancient high beach levels, and fossil
animal bones from environmentally sensitive mammals as large as elephants and as
small as mice. Such approaches have long provided a crude outline of Ice Age glaci-
ations. But in recent years the study of deep-sea and ice cores has revolutionized our
understanding of the Pleistocene by providing long sequences of constantly chan-
ging Ice Age climate from deep below the ocean floor and the heart of the Greenland
ice sheet.
The world’s ocean floors are a priceless archive of ancient climatic change.
Deep-sea cores produce long columns of ocean-floor sediments that include skel-
etons of small marine organisms that once lived close to the ocean’s surface. These
planktonic foraminifera (protozoa) consist largely of calcium carbonate. When alive,
their minute skeletons absorb organic isotopes. The ratio of two of these isotopes –
oxygen 16 and oxygen 18 – varies as a result of evaporation. When evaporation is
high, more of the lighter oxygen 16 is extracted from the ocean, leaving the plankton
to be enriched by more of the heavier oxygen 18. When great ice sheets formed on
land during glacial episodes, sea levels fell as moisture was drawn off for continen-
tal ice caps. During such periods, the world’s oceans contained more oxygen 18 in
proportion to oxygen 16, a ratio reflected in millions of foraminifera. A mass spec-
trometer is used to measure this ratio, which does not reflect ancient temperature
changes but is merely a statement about the size of the oceans and about contem-
porary events on land.
One can confirm climatic fluctuations by using other lines of evidence as well, such
as the changing frequencies of foraminifera and other groups of marine microfossils
in the cores. By using statistical techniques, and assuming that relationships between
different species and sea conditions have not changed, climatologists have been able to
turn these frequencies into numerical estimates of sea surface temperatures and ocean
salinity over the past few hundred thousand years and thus produce a climatic profile
of much of the Ice Age (see Figure 10.2). These events have been fixed at key points by
radiocarbon dates (see Chapter 5) and by studies of paleomagnetism (ancient magnet-
ism). The Matuyama–Brunhes event, a magnetic reversal of 780,000 years ago (when
the world’s magnetic field suddenly reversed), is a key stratigraphic marker, which can
 Ancient Climate and Environment 243

Figure 10.2 T
 he deep-sea core that serves as the standard reference for the past 780,000 years comes
from the Solomon Plateau in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The Matuyama–Brunhes
event occurs at a depth of 39.3 feet (11.9 meters). Above it a sawtooth-like curve iden-
tifies at least eight complete glacial and interglacial cycles.

be identified both in sea cores and in volcanic strata ashore, where it can be dated pre-
cisely with potassium-argon samples.
Ice-core studies are a comparatively recent development but are now yielding
increasingly accurate climatic portraits, especially of the later Ice Age and the past
10,000 years. They preserve records of annual snowfall going back far into the past.
As the snow layers are buried deeper and deeper in a glacier, they are compressed into
ice. The ice for winter and summer has a different texture. Once researchers realized
this, they were able to read ice cores like tree-ring samples, with very good resolution
back for 12,000 years and improving accuracy back to 40,000 years. One ice core from
Antarctica extends back over 400,000 years and shows that the past 10,000 years since
the Ice Age have been some of the most climatically stable in human history. Ice cores
have been especially useful for studying not so much the long-term fluctuations of Ice
Age climatic change but the short-term episodes of warmer and colder conditions that
occurred in the middle of glaciations, which had a profound effect on humanity. For
example, scientists now suspect that there were bursts of human activity in late Ice Age
western Europe about 35,000 and 25,000 years ago, when conditions were relatively
warm for short periods of time.
244 Ancient Climate and Environment

Figure 10.3 Provisional chronology and subdivisions of the Ice Age.

Ice and sea cores, combined with pollen analysis, have provided a broad framework
for the Pleistocene, which is in wide use by archaeologists and is worth summarizing
here (see Figure 10.3).

The Pleistocene Framework

The Pleistocene began about 1.8 million years ago, during a long-term cooling trend in
the world’s oceans. These millennia have been ones of constant climatic change. The
Pleistocene is conventionally divided into long subdivisions.
Lower Pleistocene times lasted from the beginning of the Ice Age until about
780,000 years ago. Deep-sea cores tell us that climatic fluctuations between warmer and
colder regimens were still relatively minor. These were critical millennia, for it was dur-
ing this long period that humans emerged in Africa and spread from tropical regions
into temperate latitudes in Europe and Asia.
The Middle Pleistocene began with the Matuyama–Brunhes reversal in the earth’s
magnetic polarity about 780,000 years ago, a change that has been recognized geologic-
ally not only in deep-sea cores but in volcanic rocks ashore, where it can be dated by
potassium-argon samples.
Since then, there have been at least eight cold (glacial) and warm (interglacial)
cycles, the last cycle ending about 12,000 years ago. (Strictly speaking, we are still in
 Ancient Climate and Environment 245

Figure 10.4 Distribution of major ice sheets in Europe and North America during the last Ice Age
glaciation and the extent of land exposed by low sea levels.

an interglacial today.) Typically, cold cycles have begun gradually, with vast contin-
ental ice sheets forming on land – in Scandinavia, on the Alps, and over the northern
parts of North America (see Figure 10.4). These expanded ice sheets locked up enor-
mous quantities of water, causing world sea levels to fall by several hundred feet
during glacial episodes. The geography of the world changed dramatically, and large
continental shelves were opened up for human settlement. When a warming trend
began, deglaciation occurred very rapidly, and rising sea levels flooded low-lying
coastal areas within a few millennia. During glacial periods, glaciers covered a full
one-third of the earth’s land surface, and during interglacials their extent was com-
parable to what it is today.
246 Ancient Climate and Environment

Figure 10.5 Map of the Bering Land Bridge, as reconstructed by multidisciplinary research.

Throughout the past 730,000 years, vegetational changes have mirrored climatic
fluctuations. During glacial episodes, treeless arctic steppe and tundra covered much
of Europe and parts of North America, but gave way to temperate forest during inter-
glacials. In the tropics, Africa’s Sahara Desert may have supported grassland during
interglacials, but ice and desert landscape expanded dramatically during dry, colder
spells.
The Upper Pleistocene stage began about 128,000 years ago, with the beginning of the
last interglacial. This period lasted until about 118,000 years ago, when a slow cooling
trend brought full glacial conditions to Europe and North America. This Würm glaci-
ation, named after a river in the Alps, lasted until about 15,000 years ago, when there
was a rapid return to more temperate conditions.
The Würm glaciation was a period of constantly fluctuating climatic change, with
several episodes of more temperate climate in northern latitudes (see Figure 10.2 on
p. 243). It served as the backdrop for some of the most important developments in
human prehistory, notably the spread of anatomically modern Homo sapiens from the
tropics to all parts of the Old World and into the Americas. Between about 25,000 and
15,000 years ago, northern Eurasia’s climate was intensely cold but highly variable.
A series of brilliant Stone Age hunter-gatherer cultures evolved both on the open tun-
dra of central Europe and Eurasia and in the sheltered river valleys of southwestern
France and northern Spain, cultures famous for their fine antler and bone artifacts and
exceptional artwork.
The world’s geography was dramatically different 18,000 years ago. These dif-
ferences had a major impact on human prehistory – one could walk from Siberia
to Alaska across a flat, low-lying plain, the Bering Land Bridge (see Figure 10.5).
This was the route by which humans first reached the Americas some time around
15,000 years ago.
Britain was joined to the Continent in the area of the English Channel and the south-
ern North Sea. The low-lying coastal zones of Southeast Asia were far more extensive
 Ancient Climate and Environment 247

Figure 10.6 Pollen grains: (left), spruce; (right), silver fir. Both 340 times actual size.

15,000 years ago than they are now, and they supported a thriving population of Stone
Age foragers. The fluctuating distributions of vegetational zones also affected the pat-
tern of human settlement and the course of human history.

Pollen Analysis
As long ago as 1916, Swedish botanist Lennart von Post used fossil pollen grains from
familiar trees like birches, oaks, and pines to develop a sequence of vegetation change
for northern Europe after the Ice Age. He showed how arctic, treeless tundra gave way
to birch forest, then mixed oak woodland in a dramatic sequence of change that sur-
vived in pollen samples from marshes and swamps all over Scandinavia. Since then,
pollen analysis (palynology) has become a highly sophisticated way of studying both
the ancient environment and human impacts on natural vegetation.
The principle is simple. Large numbers of pollen grains are dispersed in the atmos-
phere and have remarkable preservative properties if deposited in an unaerated geo-
logical horizon. The pollen grains can be identified microscopically (see Figure 10.6)
with great accuracy and used to reconstruct a picture of the vegetation, right down to
humble grasses and weeds that grow near the spot where they are found.
Pollen analysis begins in the field. The botanist visits the excavation and collects a
series of closely spaced pollen samples from the stratigraphic sections at the site. Back
in the laboratory, the samples are examined under a very powerful microscope. The
grains of each genus or species present are counted, and the resulting figures subjected
to statistical analysis. These counts are then correlated with the stratigraphic layers of
the excavation and data from natural vegetational sequences to provide a sequence of
vegetational change for the site. Typically, this vegetational sequence lasts a few centur-
ies or even millennia (see Figure 10.7). It forms part of a much longer pollen sequence
for the area that has been assembled from hundreds of samples from many different
sites. In northern Europe, for example, botanists have worked out a complicated series
of vegetational time zones that cover the past 12,000 years. By comparing the pollen
sequences from individual sites with the overall chronology, they can give a relative
date for the site.
Palynology has obvious applications to prehistory, for sites are often found in
swampy deposits where pollen is preserved, especially fishing or fowling camps and
248 Ancient Climate and Environment

Figure 10.7 A
 long-term pollen sequence for the Ice Age from Spain (left) compared to
oxygen-isotope curves taken from a deep-sea core in the nearby Bay of Biscay, show-
ing the close correlation between the two.

settlements near water. Isolated artifacts, or even human corpses such as that of Tollund
Man found in a Danish bog (see Figure 9.6 on p. 226), have also been discovered in these
deposits; pollen is sometimes obtained from small peat lumps adhering to crevices in
such finds. Thus botanists can assign relative dates even to isolated finds that would
otherwise remain undated.
Until recently, pollen analysts dealt in centuries. Now, thanks to much more refined
methods and AMS radiocarbon dating, they can study even transitory episodes, such as
the brief farming incident described at the beginning of this chapter. For example, dra-
matic falls in forest tree pollens at many locations in Europe chronicle the first clearance
of farming cultures with almost decade-long accuracy – at a moment when character-
istic cultivation weeds like Plantago lanceolata, already mentioned, appear for the first
time. Southwestern archaeologists now have a regional pollen sequence that provides
not only climatic information but also valuable facts about the functions of different
pueblo rooms and different foods eaten by the inhabitants.
Identifying cultural activities from pollen sites can be extremely tricky, for the tiny
grains can be transported to a site in many ways – by wind, water, rodents, even people
bringing ripe fruit home. Sometimes, too, people use surface soil from neighboring
areas, complete with its pollen content, to make a house floor. Some species, like the
sunflower, have heavy pollen that can cling to ripe fruit. Such factors are likely to con-
taminate the pollen samples from many sites unless one has other plant evidence such
as, say, squash rind or seeds to confirm the palynological data.
 Ancient Climate and Environment 249
Pollen analysis is providing new perceptions of Stone Age life at the height of the
last glaciation in southwestern France, some 15,000 to 20,000 years ago (see Figure 10.7).
This was, we are told, a period of extreme arctic cold, when Europe was in a deep freeze,
people subsisting off arctic animals and taking refuge in deep river valleys like the
Dordogne and the Vezère, where some of the earliest cave art in the world has been dis-
covered. In fact, pollen grains from the rockshelters and open camps used by Stone Age
hunter-gatherers of this period paint a very different picture of the late Ice Age climate
in this area. It is a portrait of a favored arctic environment in which the climate fluctu-
ated constantly, with surprisingly temperate conditions, especially on the south-facing
slopes of deep river valleys. Here, people used rockshelters that faced the winter sun,
where snow melted earlier in the spring, within easy reach of key reindeer migration
routes and of arctic game that wintered in the valleys. The vegetational cover was not
treeless, as is commonly assumed, but included pine, birch, and sometimes deciduous
trees, with lush summer meadows in the valley.
The late Ice Age was a period of continual and often dramatic short- and long-term
climatic change. Some of these changes lasted millennia, bringing intervals of
near-modern conditions to temperate Europe interspersed with much colder winters.
Other cold and warm snaps extended over a few centuries, causing human populations
to adapt to dramatically new conditions. Just as today, there were much shorter climatic
episodes, which endured for a year or more, bringing unusually warm summers, floods,
droughts, and other short-term events.

Short-Term Climatic Change: The Holocene

The last prolonged Ice Age glaciation ended about 15,000 years ago when North
American and European ice sheets retreated and the world entered a period of pro-
nounced global warming. Then the great glaciers retreated, sea levels rose from 300
feet (91 meters) below today’s levels to near-modern heights, and vegetation patterns
throughout the world changed considerably. Thus dawned the Holocene period (from
the Greek holos, “whole,” and kainos, “new,” thus meaning “entirely recent”), which
saw massive global warming, sudden cold snaps, and periods of warmer climate than
today, with the appearance of both food production and civilization and eventually of
the Industrial Revolution. Many people believe this warming has been continuous and
is reflected in the record warm temperatures of today. In fact, the world’s climate has
fluctuated just as dramatically as it did during the late Ice Age. Recent research is revo-
lutionizing our knowledge of these changes, which started new chapters in human his-
tory, overthrew civilizations, and caused widespread disruption. (It should be stressed
that the Holocene is a purely arbitrary scientific term, used to distinguish post-Ice Age
times. We are, in fact, in a warmer interval of the Pleistocene, and the earth will become
colder again – subject, of course, to the effects of humanly caused global warming.)
We can identify Holocene climatic changes from ice cores, sedimentary records in
caves, tree rings, and pollen samples, with a chronological resolution that improves
every year as analytical methods become ever more refined.

Centuries-Long Changes: The Younger Dryas and the Black Sea

At least three major cold snaps have cooled global temperatures over the past
11,000 years. The last of these was the so-called Little Ice Age, which lasted from about
a.d. 1300 to 1850. The earlier two of these cold intervals had major effects on the course
250 Ancient Climate and Environment
of human history, which we can now assess thanks to new deep-sea core, ice-core, and
pollen researches.
The Younger Dryas lasted from about 11,000 to 10,000 b.c. For some still
little-understood reason, global warming ceased abruptly, perhaps as a result of sud-
den changes in the warm water circulation in the Atlantic Ocean. Within a century or
so, Europe again shivered under near-Ice Age conditions as forests retreated and wide-
spread drought affected areas like southwestern Asia. This catastrophic drought after
centuries of ample rainfall may have been a major factor in the appearance of agricul-
ture and animal domestication in areas like the Euphrates and Jordan River valleys,
where dense forager populations had long subsisted off abundant food resources. What
happened next has been documented by botanist Gordon Hillman with plant remains
at the Abu Hureyra site (see Chapter 11). When the drought came, nut harvest yields
plummeted, game populations crashed, and wild cereal grasses were unable to support
a dense human population. So the foragers turned to cultivation to supplement their
food supplies. Within a few generations, they became full-time farmers. The Younger
Dryas-induced drought was not the only cause of agriculture, but the sudden climate
change was of great importance.
The Black Sea was an enormous freshwater lake (often called the Euxine Lake) iso-
lated from the Mediterranean by a huge natural earthen levee in the Bosphorus Valley
between Turkey and Bulgaria during the early Holocene. Four centuries of colder condi-
tions and drought again settled over Europe and southwestern Asia between 6200 and
5800 b.c. Many farmers abandoned long-established villages and settled near the great
lake and other permanent water sources. Deep-sea cores and pollen diagrams chron-
icle what happened next as the climate warmed up again after 5800 b.c. Sea levels
resumed their inexorable rise toward modern high levels. Salt Mediterranean waters
climbed ever higher on the Bosphorus levee. Then, in about 5500 b.c., the rising water
breached the barrier. Torrents of salt water cascaded into the Euxine Lake 500 feet (152
meters) below. Within weeks, the great waterfall had carved a deep gully and formed
the narrow strait that now links the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. The former lake
not only became a brackish ocean but rose sharply, flooding hundreds of agricultural
settlements on its shores, perhaps with great loss of life. This long-forgotten event has
recently been reconstructed from deep-sea cores taken in the Mediterranean, also in the
Black Sea, which chronicle not only the cold snap and drought but the sudden change
in the now-drowned lake. (It should be noted that this interpretation is somewhat con-
troversial as paleoclimatologists disagree as to the severity of the flood.)
The Black Sea discoveries are so new that archaeologists still have to assess their full
consequences. The flooding of the huge lake does coincide with the spread of farm-
ers across temperate Europe from the Balkans. Some experts believe the environmental
catastrophe and the spread of farming were connected, as people fled their once-fertile
homelands, but the true impact of the inundation remains controversial.

Short-Term Climatic Change: El Niño

We look back at the past through obscure mirrors, which become increasingly easy to use
as we approach recent times. Our knowledge of Ice Age climatic change is necessarily on
a grand scale, for, until recently, even ice cores did not attain the year-by-year resolution
needed to track short-term shifts. Yet such sudden changes are the most important of
all to human populations, who have to adjust constantly to unusual weather condi-
tions – to droughts and floods, to unusual heat and cold. The Younger Dryas and Black
 Ancient Climate and Environment 251

Figure 10.8 T
 he worldwide effects of a strong El Niño, reconstructed on the basis of the 1982–1983
event. We can assume that generally similar effects were experienced over the past
5,000 years.

Sea drought and flood are centuries-long events that are short by geological and early
prehistoric standards. We are only now beginning to understand their profound impact
on ancient societies. As research into these and other centuries-long events has intensi-
fied, more scholars have paid increasing attention to violent year-long episodes such as
monsoon failures, volcanic eruptions, and, most important of all, El Niños.
Identifying ancient short-term climatic change requires extremely precise and sophis-
ticated environmental and climatic evidence, much of it obtained from ice cores, pol-
len diagrams, and tree rings. Ice cores in particular are revolutionizing our knowledge
of ancient climatic shifts, for they are now achieving a resolution of five years or less,
which really allows the study of drought cycles and major El Niño events of the past.
El Niños like those in 1982–1983 and 1997–1998 grabbed world headlines, and with
good reason. Billions of dollars of damage came from drought and flood. California
enjoyed record rains, Australia and northeast Brazil suffered through brutal drought, and
enormous wildfires devastated rain forests in Southeast Asia and Mexico. Once thought
to be a purely local phenomenon off the Peruvian coast, El Niños are now known to be
global events that ripple across the entire tropics as a result of a breakdown in the atmos-
pheric and ocean circulation in the western Pacific. From the archaeologist’s point of view,
El Niños are of compelling interest, for they had drastic effects on many early civilizations
living in normally dry environments, where flooding could wipe out years of irrigation
agriculture in hours. Humanity was not that vulnerable to El Niños until people settled
in permanent villages, then cities, when the realities of farming and growing population
densities made it harder for them to move away from drought or flood (see Figure 10.8).

The Moche Civilization

A classic example of such vulnerability comes from the north coast of Peru, where the
Moche civilization flourished around a.d. 400, overseen by powerful, authoritarian
252 Ancient Climate and Environment

Figure 10.9 T
 he Moche pyramid known as Huaca del Sol, capital of powerful Moche lords in the
fifth century a . d. The pyramid was extensively damaged by powerful El Niño events.
(James Brunker / Alamy)

warrior-priests who ruled from great pyramid centers (see Figure 10.9; see also Figure 2.6
on p. 43). The Moche survived in one of the driest environments on earth by using elab-
orate irrigation schemes to harness spring runoff from the Andes in coastal river valleys.
Everything depended on ample mountain floodwaters. When drought occurred, the
Moche suffered.
The Quelccaya ice cap in the Cordillera Occidental of the southern Peruvian high-
lands lies in the same zone of seasonal rainfall as the mountains above Moche country.
Two ice cores drilled in the summit of the ice cap in 1983 provide a record of variations
in rainfall over 1,500 years, and, indirectly, an impression of the amount of runoff that
would have reached lowland river valleys during cycles of wet and dry years (see chap-
ter opener photo for an Iceland example on p. 238). In the southern highlands, El Niño
episodes have been tied to intense short-term droughts in the region, also on the nearby
altiplano, the high-altitude plains around Lake Titicaca. The appearance of such drought
events in the ice cores may reflect strong El Niño episodes in the remote past. However,
it is more productive to look at long-term dry and wet cycles.
The two ice cores, 508 and 537 feet (155 and 164 meters) long, each yielded clear lay-
ering and annual dust layers that reflected the yearly cycle of wet and dry seasons, the
latter bringing dust particles from the arid lands to the west to the high Andes, accur-
ate to within about twenty years. The cores show clear indications of long-term rainfall
variations. A short drought occurred between a.d. 534 and 540. Then, between a.d. 563
and 594, a three-decade drought cycle settled over the mountains and lowlands, with
 Ancient Climate and Environment 253
annual rainfall as much as 30 percent below normal. Abundant rainfall resumed in 602,
giving way to another drought between a.d. 636 and 645.
The thirty-year drought of a.d. 563 to 594 drastically reduced the amount of runoff
reaching coastal communities. The effect of a 25 or 30 percent reduction in the water
supply would be catastrophic, especially on farmers near the coast, well downstream
from the mountains. Moche society apparently prospered until the mid-sixth-century’s
severe drought cycle. As the drought intensified, the diminished runoff barely watered
the rich farming land far downstream. Miles of laboriously maintained irrigation canals
remained dry. Blowing sand cascaded into empty ditches. By the third or fourth year, as
the drought lowered the water table far below normal, thousands of acres of farmland
received so weak a river flow that unflushed salt accumulated in the soil. Crops with-
ered. Fortunately, the coastal fisheries still provided ample fish meal – until a strong El
Niño came along without warning, bringing warmer waters and torrential rains to the
desert and mountains.
We do not know the exact years during the long drought when strong El Niños
struck, but we can be certain that they did. We can also be sure they hit at a moment
when Moche civilization was in crisis, grain supplies running low, irrigation systems
sadly depleted, malnutrition widespread, and confidence in the rulers’ divine powers
much diminished. This was the time of the human sacrifices at Huaca de la Luna (see
the Discovery box on pp. 239–240). The warmer waters of the El Niño reduced anchovy
harvests in many places, decimating a staple both of the coastal diet and highland trade.
Torrential rains swamped the Andes and coastal plain. The arid rivers became raging
torrents, carrying everything before them. Levees and canals overflowed and collapsed.
The arduous labors of years vanished in a few weeks. Dozens of villages disappeared
under mud and debris as the farmers’ cane and adobe houses collapsed and their occu-
pants drowned. The floods polluted springs and streams, overwhelmed sanitation sys-
tems, and stripped thousands of acres of fertile soil. As the water receded and the rivers
went down, typhoid and other epidemics must have swept through the valleys, wiping
out entire communities. Infant mortality undoubtedly soared.
The Moche’s elaborate irrigation systems created an artificial landscape that sup-
ported dense farming populations in the midst of one of the driest deserts on earth,
where farming would be impossible without technological ingenuity. The farmers were
well aware of the hazards of droughts and El Niños, but technology and irrigation could
not guarantee the survival of a highly centralized society driven as much by ideology as
by pragmatic concerns. There were limits to the climatic shifts Moche civilization could
absorb. Ultimately, the Moche ran out of options and their civilization collapsed.
We do not know how long El Niños have oscillated across the globe, but they have
descended on Peru for at least 5,000 years. A new generation of climatic researches from
ice cores and other data show that short-term climatic shifts played a far more import-
ant role in the fate of early civilizations than once realized.

Tree Rings: Studying Southwestern Drought

Many ancient societies lived in environments with unpredictable rainfall where agricul-
ture was, at best, a chancy enterprise. The ancient peoples of the southwestern United
States farmed their semiarid environment with brilliant skill for more than 3,000 years,
developing an extraordinary expertise in water management and plant breeding. One
central philosophy of modern-day Pueblo Indian groups encompasses movement – the
notion that people have to move to escape drought and survive. Until recently, archae-
ologists did not fully appreciate the importance of movement in southwestern life and
254 Ancient Climate and Environment

Figure 10.10 T
 he climatic regimens of the American Southwest, showing the general configur-
ation of rainfall across the region reconstructed with tree rings. The northwestern
area receives both summer and winter rainfall, the southeastern area only predict-
able summer rainfall.

were at a loss to explain the sudden dispersal of the Ancestral Pueblo people of Chaco
Canyon and the Four Corners region in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a.d. New
studies have shown that climate played an important role in the dispersal.
Dendrochronologies for the Ancestral Pueblo are now accurate to within a year, giv-
ing us the most precise time scale for any early human society anywhere. In recent
years, the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona has under-
taken a massive dendroclimatic study that has yielded a reconstruction of relative cli-
matic variability in the Southwest from a.d. 680 to 1970. The same scientists, headed
by Jeffrey Dean, are now producing the first quantitative reconstructions of annual and
seasonal rainfall, also of temperature, drought, and stream flow for the region. Such
research involves not only tree-ring sequences but also intricate mathematical expres-
sions of the relationships between tree growth and such variables as rainfall, tempera-
ture, and crop yields. These calculations yield statistical estimations of the fluctuations
in these variables on an annual and seasonal basis.
By using a spatial grid of twenty-seven long tree-ring sequences from throughout
the Southwest, Dean and his colleagues have compiled maps that plot the different sta-
tion values and their fluctuations like contour maps, one for each decade. This enables
them to study such phenomena as the progress of what Dean sometimes calls the “Great
 Ancient Climate and Environment 255
Drought” of a.d. 1276 to 1299 from northwest to southeast across the region. In 1276, the
beginnings of the drought appear as negative standard deviations from average rain-
fall in the northwest while the remainder of the region enjoys above-average rainfall.
During the next ten years, very dry conditions expand over the entire Southwest before
improved rainfall arrives after 1299. This form of mapping allows close correlation of
vacated large and small pueblos with short-term climatic fluctuations (see Figure 10.10).
When the researchers looked at the entire period from a.d. 966 to 1988, they found
that the tree-ring stations in the northwestern region accounted for no less than 60 per-
cent of the rainfall variance. In contrast, stations in the southeastern part of the Southwest
accounted for only 10 percent. This general configuration, which persisted for centuries,
coincides with the modern distribution of seasonal rainfall in the Southwest: predict-
able summer rainfall dominates the southeastern areas, while the northwest receives
both winter and summer precipitation. Winter rains are much more uncertain. When the
scientists examined this general rainfall pattern at 100-year intervals from 539 to 1988,
they observed that it persisted most of the time, even though the boundary between the
two zones moved backward and forward slightly.
But this long-term pattern broke down completely from a.d. 1250 to 1450, when a
totally aberrant pattern prevailed in the northwest. The southeast remained stable, but
there was major disruption elsewhere. For nearly two centuries, the relatively simple
long-term pattern of summer and winter rains gave way to complex, unpredictable pre-
cipitation and severe droughts, especially on the Colorado Plateau. The change to an
unstable pattern would have had a severe impact on Ancestral Pueblo farmers, espe-
cially as it coincided with the Great Drought of a.d. 1250 to 1299.
Why did this breakdown occur? Dean divides the relationship between climatic
change and human behavior into three broad categories. Certain obvious stable elem-
ents in the Ancestral Pueblo environment have not changed over the past 2,000 years,
such as bedrock geology and climate type. Then there are low-frequency environmen-
tal changes – those that occur on cycles longer than a human generation of twenty-five
years. Few people witnessed these changes during their lifetimes. Changes in hydro-
logical conditions such as cycles of erosion and deposition along stream courses, fluc-
tuations in water table levels in river floodplains, and changes in plant distributions
transcend generations, but they could affect the environment drastically, especially in
drought cycles.
Shorter-term, high-frequency changes were readily apparent to every Ancestral
Pueblo person: year-to-year rainfall shifts, decade-long drought cycles, seasonal
changes, and so on. Over the centuries, they were probably barely aware of long-term
change, for the present generation and their ancestors enjoyed the same basic adap-
tation, which one could call a form of “stability.” Cycles of drought, unusually heavy
rains, and other high-frequency changes required temporary and flexible adjustments,
such as farming more land, relying more heavily on wild plant foods, and, above all,
movement across the terrain.
Such strategies worked well for centuries, as long as the Ancestral Pueblo people
farmed their land at well below its carrying capacity. When the population increased to
near carrying capacity, however, as it did at Chaco Canyon in the twelfth century, people
became increasingly vulnerable to brief events like El Niños or droughts, which could
stretch the supportive capacity of a local environment within months, even weeks. Their
vulnerability was even more extreme when long-term changes – such as a half century
or more of much drier conditions – descended on farming land already pushed to its
carrying limits. Under these circumstances, a year-long drought or torrential rains could
quickly destroy a local population’s ability to support itself. So the people dispersed
256 Ancient Climate and Environment
into other areas where there were ample soil and better water supplies. Climate change
and drought did not, of course, cause the Ancestral Pueblo dispersal by themselves, for
other significant political and social factors came into play. Without question, however,
the Ancestral Pueblo people dispersed from Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon in part
because drought forced them to do so. Unlike the Moche in distant Peru, they had the
flexibility to move away.
The coming decades will see a revolution in our understanding of ancient environ-
ments and short-term climatic change as scientists acquire a closer knowledge both
of climates in the past and of the still little-known forces that drive the global wea-
ther machine. Like our predecessors, we still live in the Ice Age, which, some esti-
mates calculate, will bring renewed glacial conditions in about 23,000 years’ time.
So it is hardly surprising that, like our forebears, we have had to adjust to constant
short-term climatic changes. And, as humanly induced global warming acceler-
ates, these changes may become more frequent and violent, spelling danger for an
overpopulated world.

Geoarchaeology
Sediments and soils contain a record of climate change, for climate helps drive geo-
morphic and landscape changes on earth. Geoarchaeology, the study of archaeology
using the methods and concepts of the earth sciences, plays a major role in reconstruct-
ing ancient environments and landscapes. This is a far wider enterprise than geology
and involves at least four major approaches:

1. Geochemical, electromagnetic, and other remote-sensing devices to locate sites and

environmental features (see Chapter 6).
2. Studies of site-formation processes and of the spatial contexts of archaeological sites
(see Chapters 5 and 9), a process that includes distinguishing humanly caused phe-
nomena from natural features.
3. Reconstructing the ancient landscape by a variety of paleogeographic and biological
methods, including pollen analysis.
4. Relative and chronometric dating of sites and their geological contexts.

Geoarchaeology plays a major role in the study of early Egyptian and Mesopotamian
civilizations. Both lay in fertile lands transected by great rivers. The annual inunda-
tions of the Nile brought silt to the floodplain from far upstream, fertilizing the fields.
In drought years, when the flood failed, crops failed and people went hungry. In about
2180 b.c., the Nile experienced poor floods for generations. The pharaohs were power-
less, and Egypt fell apart into its nine provinces, each ruled by powerful warlords. More
than a century passed before powerful leaders from Upper Egypt reunited the kingdom.
The pharaohs learned their lesson and invested heavily in centralized storage and irri-
gation. In Mesopotamia, Sumerian cities were at the mercy of flood and drought, espe-
cially when high floods caused river courses to change or when sluggish waters failed,
leading to a rapid rise in the salinity of the soil and much lower crop yields.
On a smaller scale, people are geomorphic agents, just like the wind. Accidentally or
deliberately, they carry inorganic and organic materials to their homes. They remove
rubbish, make tools, build houses, abandon tools. These mineral and organic materi-
als are subjected to all manner of mechanical and biochemical processes while people
live on a site and after they abandon it. The controlling geomorphic system at a site,
 Ancient Climate and Environment 257
whatever its size, is made up not only of natural elements but of a vital cultural compo-
nent as well. The geoarchaeologist is involved with archaeological investigations from
the very beginning and deals not only with formation of sites and with the changes they
underwent during occupation but also with what happened to them after abandonment.
In the field, the geoarchaeologist is part of the multidisciplinary research team,
recording stratigraphic profiles within the excavation and in special pits close by in
order to obtain information on soil sediment sequences. At the same time, he or she
takes soil samples for pollen and sediment analyses and relates the site to its landscape
by topographic survey. Working closely with survey archaeologists, geoarchaeologists
locate sites and other cultural features on the natural landscape using aerial photo-
graphs, satellite images, and even geophysical prospecting on individual sites. As part
of this process, they examine dozens of natural geological exposures, where they study
the stratigraphic and sedimentary history of the entire region as a wider context for the
sites found within it. The ultimate objective is to identify not only the microenviron-
ment of the site but also that of the region as a whole – to establish ecological and spatial
frameworks for the socioeconomic and settlement patterns that are revealed by archaeo-
logical excavations and surveys.

SUMMARY
1. The study of long- and short-term climatic and environmental change is of vital
importance to archaeologists concerned with human societies’ changing relation-
ships with their surroundings.
2. This chapter describes ways of studying such changes. Deep-sea cores and ice drill-
ings provide us with a broad framework of climatic change during the Pleistocene
(Ice Age) that chronicles at least eight glacial periods during the past 780,000 years.
3. The Pleistocene itself is divided into three broad subdivisions, the last of which
coincides with the spread of modern humans across the world from Africa. The
Holocene covers postglacial times and witnessed not only global warming but at
least three short periods of much colder conditions.
4. The Younger Dryas brought drought and cold conditions and may have helped trig-
ger agriculture in southwestern Asia.
5. The catastrophic flooding of the Black Sea lake in about 5500 b.c. by salt water from
the Mediterranean caused major population movements in Europe.
6. Short-term events such as El Niños and droughts in the southwestern United States
are studied with the aid of ice cores, geological observations, and tree rings – meth-
ods achieving increasing precision.
7. We are now beginning to realize that short-term climatic change played a vital role
in the rise and fall of many human societies.
8. Geoarchaeology is a multidisciplinary approach to the study of human adaptations
that reconstructs ancient landscapes using such techniques as remote sensing and
paleographic and biological methods such as pollen analysis.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What are the differences between centuries-long and shorter climatic events in the
context of human history?
258 Ancient Climate and Environment
2. What methods are used to study changing Ice Age climates, and what are their
limitations?
3. How did El Niño events affect various ancient societies?

FURTHER READING
Karl Butzer, Archaeology as Human Ecology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1982), is fundamental; so is his Environment and Archaeology, 2nd edn. (Chicago: Aldine,
1971). Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), argues for
the importance of environment and climate change in the past in a stimulating essay for
the general reader. Climate change: Wallace Broecker, The Great Ocean Conveyer: Discovering
the Trigger for Abrupt Climate Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), is
a solid introduction. Brian Fagan, The Long Summer (New York: Basic Books, 2004), ana-
lyzes the impacts of long-term and short-term climatic change on human societies since
18,000 years ago. For the Moche, see Walter Alva and Christopher Donnan, The Royal Tombs
of Sipán (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1983). Andean ice-core
research is described by L. Thompson and others, “El Niño – Southern Oscillation and
Events Recorded in the Stratigraphy of the Tropical Quelccaya Ice Cap,” Science 225: 50–53,
and “A 1500-Year Tropical Ice Core Record of Climate: Potential Relations to Man in the
Andes,” Science 234 (1986): 361–364. Tree-ring research is well described by Jeffrey Dean,
“Demography, Environment, and Subsistence Stress,” in Joseph A. Tainter and Bonnie
Bagley Tainter, eds., Evolving Complexity and Environmental Risk in the Prehistoric Southwest
(Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1996), pp. 25–56.
newgenprepdf

11 Come Tell Me How You Lived

CHAPT ER OU TL I N E
Evidence for Subsistence 260
Ancient Diet 260
Animal Bones 264
Faunal Analysis (Zooarchaeology) 265
Comparing Bone Assemblages 265
Species Abundance and Cultural Change 268
Game Animals 268
Domesticated Animals 269
Ancient Butchery 269
Plant Remains 272
Birds, Fish, and Mollusks 275
Rock Art 277

Ankole ox from Uganda, East Africa.

(1001slide / iStock by Getty Images)
260 Come Tell Me How You Lived

PREVIEW
Chapter 11 discusses the ways in which archaeologists reconstruct ancient subsistence.
To establish entire ancient diets is often near-impossible, except when isotopic analysis
on bones can be used or human coprolites are available. We describe zooarchaeology,
the study of animal bones, the identification of animals, the study of butchering meth-
ods, and comparing different assemblages. Next, we turn to botanical remains and flo-
tation methods before briefly surveying ways of studying birds, fish, and mollusks. We
also assess ways in which rock art can throw light on ancient subsistence.
How did ancient peoples make their living? The old stereotype of Stone Age hunters
pursuing large game animals like saber-toothed tigers and living off orgies of frenzied
meat consumption vanished generations ago. We now know that plant foods and fish
were vital components in many ancient diets, and ancestral Native Americans had an
astounding knowledge of potentially cultivable native plants. Reconstructing ancient
subsistence is a painstaking process involving days of analysis of animal bones broken
into tiny fragments and highly specialized research into tiny plant seeds recovered with
sophisticated sampling machines.
In some ways, studying ancient subsistence is archaeological detective work at
its best. Astoundingly detailed information about prehistoric foraging and agricul-
ture can come from the tiniest of clues, such as fish scales and seed impressions in
clay pots. But, as always, these triumphs of detection form part of a larger concern, a
search for answers to fundamental questions. For example, when studying prehistoric
subsistence the archaeologist seeks to answer many fundamental questions, among
them the role of domestic animals in a mixed farming economy. How important was
fishing to a shellfish-oriented population living by the ocean? Was a site occupied sea-
sonally while the inhabitants concentrated on, say, bird snaring to the exclusion of all
other subsistence activities? What agricultural systems were used? How was the land
cultivated? In this chapter we review some of the ways we seek the answers to these
and related subsistence questions.

Evidence for Subsistence

The archaeological evidence for prehistoric subsistence consists of artifacts and food
remains. How much survives depends, of course, on preservation conditions on the site.
All too often the evidence for ancient diet is incomplete. Stone axes or iron hoe blades
may give an indication of hunting or agriculture, but they hardly yield the kind of detail
archaeologists need. Many artifacts used in the chase or for agriculture were made from
such perishable materials as bone, wood, and fiber (see Figure 11.1).
Food remains survive very unevenly. The bones and teeth of larger mammals are the
most common subsistence data, but careful excavation often reveals remains of such
small animals as birds, fish, and frogs as well as invertebrates such as beetles. Plant
remains are very perishable and usually are underrepresented, despite the development
of sophisticated field recovery methods.

Ancient Diet
The ultimate aim in studying prehistoric food remains is not only to establish how people
obtained their food but to reconstruct their actual diet. An overall picture of prehistoric
diet requires, of course, constructing a comprehensive list of food resources available to
 Come Tell Me How You Lived 261

Figure 11.1 Ground stone ax with a modern wooden handle, location unknown.
(Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy)

the people within that particular environment and then answering questions such as
these: What proportion of the diet was meat? How diverse were dietary sources? Did the
principal diet sources change from season to season? Was food stored? Were some foods
more desirable than others? These and many other questions can be answered only from
composite pictures of prehistoric diet reconstructed from many sources of evidence.
Occasionally, however, it is possible to gain insights into actual meals consumed
thousands of years ago. The stomach of Tollund Man, whose body was buried and
preserved in a Danish peat bog, contained the remains of finely ground porridge
made from barley, linseed, and several wild grasses (see Figure 9.6 on p. 226). No meat
was found in his belly. The Ice Man from the European Alps, described in Chapter 13,
consumed meat, unleavened bread, and an herb for his last meal (see Figure 13.4
on p. 312). However, his bones showed clear signs of malnutrition from famines in
his ninth, fifteenth, and sixteenth years. Ancient digestive tracts also yield inform-
ative waste products. Human excrement (coprolites or feces) found in dry caves in
the United States and Mexico has been analyzed microscopically. The inhabitants of
Lovelock Cave in the central Nevada desert were eating bulrush and cattail seeds as well
as Lahontan chub from the waters of nearby Humboldt Lake. These fish were eaten
raw or roasted over a fire. One coprolite contained the remains of at least fifty-one
chub, calculated by a fish expert to represent a total fish weight of 3.5 pounds (1.6
kilograms). The same people were eating adult and baby birds as well as water tiger
beetles. Human feces from Texas caves near the mouth of the Pecos River have been
subjected to pollen analyses so precise that the investigators established the sites to
have been occupied regularly during the spring and summer months for 1,300 years
between 800 b . c . and a . d. 550.
262 Come Tell Me How You Lived

Discovery
The Göbekli Tepe Carvings, Turkey, 1994
German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt discovered the large Göbekli Tepe mound in south-
eastern Turkey during an archaeological survey in 1994. He knew at once that it was a site
that dated from the very earliest centuries of agriculture, around 9600 B.C., from the stone
artifacts scattered on the surface. At the same time, he picked up dozens of smashed lime-
stone slabs, many of them carefully shaped.
Göbekli Tepe lies atop a large hill overlooking the surrounding plains. It’s a conspicuous
landmark, but it turned out to be a site whose occupants were still hunting and gathering
and were not farming at all. But they built a series of unique and evocative shrines and
erected large decorated pillars, which Schmidt calls megaliths. Most were T-shaped mono-
lithic pillars, standing several feet high and weighing as much as 10 tons. The limestone
came from nearby quarries. One, abandoned there, was nearly 23 feet (7 meters) long and
weighed an estimated 50 tons.
Many of the pillars bear pairs of arms and hands in low relief, as if they were stylized
depictions of people, the horizontal part of the T representing the head (see Figure 11.2).
Some bear carvings of lions, foxes, wild boars and oxen, even birds, spiders, and insects.
Bones of most of these creatures come from the village middens. The pillars themselves
formed circular or oval enclosures, as many as twelve of them separated by stone benches.
Two pillars of the finest quality and greater size lay in the center of each enclosure.
Fortunately for Schmidt, later farmers dumped refuse into the enclosures and buried
them before they could be disturbed. Schmidt excavated four, but a geomagnetic survey
has revealed traces of at least twenty more containing more than 200 pillars.
What are we to make of Göbekli Tepe? A prodigious amount of labor created the pillars
and enclosures, but there are no signs that the site was ever an inhabited settlement. There
are no dwellings, no courtyards, and little domestic refuse. Göbekli Tepe was a shrine,
a place that must have been known to villagers living over a wide area, who could see
the mound from a long way off. Nearby lies Nevali Çori, another settlement that Schmidt

Figure 11.2 G öbekli Tepe, Turkey. (a) A large subterranean building showing monoliths
embedded in the dry stone walls at the edge of the building, where a bench is
emerging from the excavations.
(National Geographic Image Collection / Alamy)
(b) A monolith from the site, with low-relief sculpture.
(Marion Bull / Alamy)
 Come Tell Me How You Lived 263
had excavated earlier. But Nevali Çori was a place where people lived for a considerable
period, where there was a small shrine with T-shaped megaliths and carvings of humans
and animals. Schmidt believes that the inhabitants of this and other settlements visited
Göbekli Tepe on a seasonal basis, when they quarried and carved megaliths and erected
them in sacred enclosures. Once one structure was completed, they would infill it and build
another. He also believes that the enclosures were built not for the living but for the dead.
So far, the excavators have found no traces of burials, but they may lie behind the enclos-
ure walls or beneath the stone benches. This would account for the progressive abandon-
ment and building of the shrines.
Tiny hunter-gatherer communities produce relatively small food surpluses. It would have
been difficult for them to muster the large numbers of people to build shrines and erect
monoliths to commemorate their ancestors. Perhaps agriculture in this region began when
hard-pressed hunter-gatherer bands looked for new ways to feed people as they fulfilled
their ritual obligation to the dead. One logical way to do this would have been by increasing
the supply of wild plant foods by sowing them to supplement the food supply. If Schmidt is
correct in this assumption, then it may be that human beliefs and social systems changed
before economic life, when ritual observances and obligations to ancestors and clan fig-
ures became overwhelmingly important to hunter-gatherer societies. After all, everyone
was familiar with the germination of wild plants. Why not then plant them deliberately?

Although coprolite studies are a promising source of dietary information, the food
remains from most sites are far too incomplete to allow more than a very general
impression of diet. Research using the ratio between two stable carbon isotopes – C-12
and C-13 in animal tissue – has enabled scientists to establish the diet of prehistoric
populations as they switched from wild foods to a predominantly maize diet. Carbon is
metabolized in plants through two major pathways: C4 and C3. Maize, for example, is
a C4 plant. In contrast, most indigenous temperate flora in North America is composed
of C3 varieties. Thus a population that shifts its diet from wild vegetable foods to maize
also will experience a shift in dietary isotopic values. Because C-13 and C-12 values do
not change after death, researchers can study archaeological carbon from food remains,
humus, and skeletal remains to gain insight into ancient diet.
For example, a detailed bone chemistry analysis of adult burials from Grasshopper
Pueblo in east-central Arizona shows the great potential of this approach. Joseph Ezzo
was able to show that between a.d. 1275 and 1325, males had greater access to meat and
cultivated plants, and females had greater access to wild plants. Between 1325 and 1400,
both men and women ate virtually the same diet, one in which meat and wild plant
foods were less important. This may have resulted from a combination of social and
environmental factors: increased population, drought cycles, and use of marginal farm-
ing land, which compelled the Grasshopper people to live on agricultural products.
The people responded to food stress by increasing storage capacity, reducing household
size, and eventually by moving away.
The stable carbon isotope method has been used to study the diet of prehistoric
Northwest Coast populations in British Columbia. Forty-eight samples from prehis-
toric human skeletons from fifteen sites along the coast revealed a dietary reliance of
about 90 percent on marine sources, a figure much higher than crude ethnographic esti-
mates. The same data suggest that there has been little dietary change along the British
Columbia coast for the past 5,000 years, which is hardly surprising, given the rich mari-
time resources of the shoreline.
The Iron Gates gorges of the Danube River were a rich fishery, especially for migrat-
ing sturgeon as well as large catfish and pike, all harvested during spring and fall.
264 Come Tell Me How You Lived
Between 7200 and 6300 b.c., people exploiting the river occupied settlements often used
for long periods of time. Stable isotope samples from human skeletons at two sites –
Vlasac and Schela Cladovei – show that between 60 and 85 percent of their diet came
from aquatic sources.
Recent research has focused on nitrogen isotopes that allow researchers to distin-
guish among marine, freshwater, and terrestrial food sources, an approach of import-
ance when investigating changeovers from more land-based diets to marine ones, an
important issue in ancient California. Trace element analysis of such materials as
strontium and zinc in bones and other organic materials tells us much about ancient
diet. Nearer to modern times, a sample of President George Washington’s hair has
revealed a diet of wheat, beans, and much corn. The sample also revealed a strong
but not overwhelming signal from meats, while Washington also ate some seafood.
His diet was roughly in the middle of a chart compiled from dietary surveys of 10,000
modern-day University of Virginia students. Isotopic tests also allow research into
child weaning practices, dietary changes over the life of an individual, even mobil-
ity from one area to another, identified by studying the bone chemistry of burials
in royal graves and cemeteries (sacrificial victims, for example, could come from a
different area).

Animal Bones
Broken animal bones can tell us a great deal about ancient hunting, herd management,
and butchery practices. One can identify mammal species from their skeletal remains.
Unfortunately, however, most animal bones found in archaeological sites are highly
fragmentary. Until recently, researchers assumed they were in such small fragments
because the inhabitants slashed to ribbons every carcass they butchered. But research
on modern predator kills and controlled experiments on butchered animals, mainly
in Africa, have shown that a great many complex and little-understood forces act on
bones found in archaeological sites long after they are dropped where archaeologists
find them. Weathering as bones decay in the open air, compaction of the sediments in
which they are buried, chemistry of the soil, even treading by animals can break up
bones and help determine which parts of the body survive and which do not. Add to
these accidents the butchering activities of the prehistoric inhabitants, and you have an
archaeological jigsaw puzzle to piece together (see Figure 11.3).
Generally speaking, the older the archaeological site, the more daunting it is to
study postdepositional forces. The problem is particularly confusing at locations such
as Olduvai Gorge or Koobi Fora in East Africa, where hominins chewed and cut bones
more than 2 million years ago – and probably scavenged their meat from predator
kills as well. On more recent sites, one finds that people often utilized the carcasses
they butchered to the maximum. Every piece of usable meat was stripped from the
bones of even the smallest animals or from the larger mammal portions brought back
to the settlement. Sinews were made into thongs. Skins became clothing, containers,
or even part of a shelter. Even the entrails were eaten. The hunters smashed the bones
themselves to get at the marrow or for manufacture into arrowheads or other tools.
Animal bones were fragmented by many domestic activities, quite apart from tramp-
ling underfoot and scavenging by dogs and carnivores. Thus one has the formidable
task of identifying from tiny, discarded fragments the animal that was hunted or kept
by the site’s inhabitants and the role the animal played in the economy, diet, and cul-
ture of the community.
 Come Tell Me How You Lived 265

Faunal Analysis (Zooarchaeology)

Most animal bone collections consist of thousands of scattered fragments from all parts
of a site. Occasionally, however, a kill site, perhaps from prehistoric bison kills on the
Great Plains or the big game slaughtered by Stone Age hunters in East Africa, provides
a chance to reconstruct the hunters’ activities in more detail. Apart from such unusual
finds, most collections have to be sorted out in the laboratory simply to give a general
impression of hunting and stock-raising techniques at the site. The goal of zooarchaeol-
ogy – the study of animal bones found in the archaeological record – is to reconstruct the
environment and behavior of ancient peoples as thoroughly as animal remains allow. But
the study of such bones is complicated by the natural and anthropomorphic (humanly
induced) processes that operate on organic remains as they lie on or in the ground. The
study of this transition by animal remains from the biosphere is known as taphonomy.
Taphonomy involves two related forms of research: observing recently dead car-
casses as they are gradually transformed into fossils, and studying fossil remains with
the knowledge gained from these observations. The crux of the zooarchaeologists’ diffi-
culty is their subject: a collection of animal bones, the part of the fossil assemblage that is
actually excavated or collected. This fossil assemblage in turn consists of the body parts
that survive in the archaeological record, an assemblage very different from the ori-
ginal community of live animals that once populated the natural environment in their
“natural” proportions. Animal bone analysis involves two fundamental problems: first,
estimating the characteristics of a fossil assemblage from a collected sample, a statistical
problem; and second, inferring what the original bone assemblage was like before it
became a fossil, a taphonomic problem (see Figure 11.3).
Researchers begin by isolating the diagnostic fragments. Often only a few bones are
identifiable to the species level. One 3,000-year-old Central African hunter-gatherer
settlement yielded only 2,128 identifiable fragments out of 195,415 bones! The actual
identifications are made by comparing such diagnostic body parts as teeth, jaws, horns,
and some limb bones with modern animal skeletons (see Figure 11.4). This procedure is
not as easy as it sounds. Domestic sheep and goats have skeletons that are almost iden-
tical to those of their wild ancestors; the bones of the domestic ox closely resemble those
of the African buffalo; and so on. But accurate identifications are vital, for they provide
answers to many questions. Are both domestic and wild animals present? If so, what are
the proportions of each group? Were the inhabitants concentrating on one species to the
exclusion of all others? Are any now-extinct species present?

Comparing Bone Assemblages

Having identified the animals present, how do you compare the proportions of dif-
ferent species from one site with those from another? The work is fraught with dif-
ficulty because it is almost impossible to infer the once-living population from the
surviving bones.
Zooarchaeologists therefore apply two measures of specimen abundance to study the
relative abundance of species:

1. The number of identified specimens (NISP) is a count of the number of identifiable

bones or bone fragments present that can be identified as to animal. This count has
obvious disadvantages because it is easy to overestimate one species at the expense
of another, especially if its bones are cut into small fragments. The NISP has some
limited use in conjunction with the minimum number of individuals.
266 Come Tell Me How You Lived

Figure 11.3 S
 ome of the factors that affect animal bones found in archaeological sites. On the left
are factors over which the archaeologist has no control; on the right, those that can
be controlled.
 Come Tell Me How You Lived 267

Figure 11.4 A
 t the top, a dog skeleton with the most important body parts labeled from the bone
identification point of view. At the bottom, a domestic ox jaw seen from below (upper
jaw) and above (lower jaw). Notice the characteristic cusp patterns of molars and pre-
molars that grow as the beast gets older.
268 Come Tell Me How You Lived
2. The minimum number of individuals (MNI) is a count of the number of individuals
necessary to account for all of the identifiable bones. This count is based on careful
inventories of individual body parts (e.g., jaws). The MNI is a much more accur-
ate estimate of the number of animals present in a collection. For example, Joe Ben
Wheat used the bison skulls from the Olsen– Chubbuck bison kill to estimate that
the hunters killed no fewer than 190 animals.

Using these two counts together brackets the actual number of animals present in a
bone sample, but the figure is still only an approximation, even when used with sophis-
ticated computer programs.

Species Abundance and Cultural Change

Climatic change rather than human culture was probably responsible for most long-term
shifts in abundance of animal species during the Ice Age. Some changes in the abun-
dance of animals in bone collections, however, must reflect human activity – changes in
the way in which people exploited animals.
Zooarchaeologist Richard Klein has studied two coastal caves in South Africa –
Klasies River and Nelson’s Bay – to document such changes. The Klasies River Cave on
the Cape coast was occupied by Middle Stone Age hunters from about 130,000 to about
70,000 years ago during a period of progressively colder climate. The people took seals,
penguins, and shellfish and lived off the eland, a large antelope. The nearby Nelson’s
Bay cave was occupied by Late Stone Age people after 20,000 years ago. These people
took not only dangerous or elusive land mammals such as the Cape buffalo but birds
and fish, both quarries requiring some skill to hunt or take successfully.
Did these changes between the two sites reflect cultural change or climatic differ-
ences? Were eland more abundant in earlier times or just easier to hunt? Klein exam-
ined the toolkits from each cave and found that Middle Stone Age artifacts were large
spear points and scrapers, but the later Nelson’s Bay people used bows, arrows, and an
elaborate toolkit of small, more specialized tools. This more specialized toolkit allowed
the Nelson’s Bay groups to hunt more dangerous and tricky quarry with great success.
Therefore, eland were less common prey later not because of climatic change but because
other animals were hunted, too. Then, too, in later times the population was larger.
Klein suggests the growth from his examination of the limpet and tortoise shells from
both sites. The Nelson’s Bay specimens are smaller, as if these creatures were allowed to
grow larger in earlier millennia when fewer people were there to exploit them.

Game Animals
A collection of game animals yields a wealth of information about the great variety
of mammals that ancient hunters killed with astonishingly simple weapons. North
American Paleo-Indian bands used game drives, spears, and other weapons to hunt
herds of now-extinct big game. Twenty thousand years ago, big-game hunters on the
banks of the Dnieper and Don rivers in western Russia cooperated in pursuing mam-
moth and other arctic mammals. They cached supplies of game meat to tide them over
the long, bitterly cold winters, which lasted more than eight months.
When the identified game animal bones are counted, one species may appear to dom-
inate. Some hunters concentrate on one or a few species, whether from economic neces-
sity, convenience, or cultural preference. They may take hundreds of bison in fall, when
 Come Tell Me How You Lived 269
they are fat from summer forage, and kill the minimum in spring, when the animals
are in poor condition after the harsh months. Even with these differences taken into
account, the figures can be misleading, for many societies restrict the hunting of particu-
lar animals. Others forbid males or females to eat certain species, although other species
may be consumed by everyone. The !Kung San of the Kalahari today have complicated
personal and age- or sex-specific taboos to regulate their eating habits. No one may eat
all of the twenty-nine game animals regularly taken by the San. Indeed, no two individ-
uals have the same set of taboos. Such complicated restrictions are repeated with innu-
merable variations in other hunter-gatherer societies. The simple dietary figure of, say,
40 percent white-tailed deer and 20 percent wild geese may, in fact, reflect much more
complex behavioral variables than mere concentration on two species.

Domesticated Animals
Domestic animal bones present even more difficulties. Owners can affect their herds
and flocks in many ways – by selective breeding to improve meat yields or to increase
wool production, and by regulating the ages at which they slaughter surplus males and
old animals. All domesticated animals originated from wild species with an inclination
to be sociable, a characteristic that aided close association with humans.
Animal domestication may have begun when a growing human population needed
a regular food supply to support a greater density of people per square mile. Wild ani-
mals lack many characteristics valuable in their domestic relatives. Wild sheep have
hairy coats, but their wool is unsuitable for spinning. The ancestors of oxen and domes-
tic goats produced milk for their young but not enough for human consumption. People
have selectively bred wild animals for long periods to enhance special characteristics.
Often the resulting domestic animals can no longer survive in the wild.
The history of domestic animals must be written from fragmentary animal bones
found in sites occupied by prehistoric farmers. The difference between domestic
and wild animal bones is often so small that it may be next to impossible to tell the
two apart. From a single jaw, no one can tell a domestic sheep or goat from a wild
one. Archaeologists have to work with large numbers of animals, studying changing
body sizes and bone characteristics as the animals undergo selective breeding. Early
Southwest Asian domestic sheep are smaller and display less variation in size than their
wild relatives. Even then, it is, according to the Scriptures, “difficult to tell the sheep
from the goats.”

Ancient Butchery
Prehistoric peoples hunted game animals for food and used their hides for garments
and tents and their stomachs for bags. Domesticated animals provided meat and were
used for plowing, for riding, or for their milk. Establishing such practices from frag-
mentary animal bones is difficult, involving close study of both the age of slaughtered
animals and the ways in which they were butchered.
Just as with comparing different assemblages, the problem is turning figures and
percentages into meaningful interpretations of human behavior. Research such as Lewis
Binford’s studies of Alaskan caribou hunters has provided valuable information for
such approaches (see Chapter 9).
Determining the sex and age of an animal may provide a way of studying the hunt-
ing or stock-raising habits of those who slaughtered it. Many mammal species vary
270 Come Tell Me How You Lived

Idealized catastrophic Idealized attritional

Number of individuals
age profile age profile

Older Older

cm cm

Crown Crown
height height

Eland Cape buffalo

50
Number of individuals

40

30

20

10

20 40 60 80 100% 20 40 60 80 100%
Percentage of lifespan

Figure 11.5 I dealized mortality data based on molar crowns of two common South African mam-
mals, the eland and the Cape buffalo. Left, idealized catastrophic age profile. Right,
idealized attritional age profile (for explanation, see text).

considerably in size and build between male and female. With species such as the North
American bison, researchers can often distinguish male from female by bone sizes, but
the determination is much more difficult with animals where the size difference is less.
Teeth and the epiphyses (joints) at the end of limb bones are most commonly used
to establish the ages of prehistoric animals. In almost all mammals, the epiphyses fuse
to the limb bones at adulthood, so one can immediately establish two categories of ani-
mals: immature and fully grown. Teeth and complete jaws are a more accurate way
of establishing animal age. Teeth provide an almost continuous guide to the age of an
animal from birth to old age. With complete jaws one can study immature teeth as they
erupt. Large numbers of them enable archaeologists to count with some accuracy the
proportions of immature and very old animals with heavily worn teeth.
Richard Klein has used the height of tooth crowns to study the age of mammals taken by
Stone Age hunters at the Klasies River and Nelson’s Bay caves in South Africa. He has iden-
tified two “mortality distributions” that apply to prehistoric and living animal populations.
 Come Tell Me How You Lived 271
A catastrophic age profile is stable in size and structure and has progressively fewer
older individuals. This is the normal distribution for living antelope populations (see
Figure 11.5). If a group of hunters drives a herd over a cliff, you will find a distribution
like this, for they are not being discriminating in their hunting.
An attritional age profile shows underrepresentation of prime-age animals relative
to their abundance in living populations, but young and old are overrepresented. This
profile is thought to result from scavenging or simple spear hunting.
The eland tooth profiles at both Klasies River and Nelson’s Bay were close to the
catastrophic profile, and so Klein argued that they were hunted in mass game drives.
In contrast, the more formidable Cape buffalo displayed an attritional profile, as if the
hunters had preyed on immature and old beasts over long periods.
These interpretations are fine at a general level, but it is much harder to draw more
specific conclusions. Lewis Binford’s Nunamiut caribou hunters from Alaska direct
much of their hunting activities toward obtaining meat for winter consumption. In
the fall, they pursue caribou calves to obtain clothing. The heads and tongues of these
young animals provide meat for the people who process the skins.
The fragmentary bones in an occupation level are the end product of the killing,
cutting up, and consumption of domestic or wild animals. To understand the butch-
ery process, the articulation of animal bones must be examined in the levels where
they are found, or a close study made of fragmentary pieces. Rarely is an entire kill
site preserved, like the famed Olsen–Chubbuck bison kill in Colorado, where at least
190 bison were driven to their deaths, then dismembered, more than 8,000 years ago.
Archaeologist Joe Ben Wheat showed that for several days the hunters camped by their
prey as they dismembered the uppermost bison in the confused heap of dead animals
before them. When they had eaten their fill and dried enough meat to last them a month
or more, they simply walked away and left the rotting carcasses. Archaeologists found
the articulated and butchered skeletons thousands of years later.
Bone analyses also reveal that many ancient hunters were selective in the chase. For
example, John Speth’s excavations at Garnsey, New Mexico, on the southern plains,
reveal that ancient Plains hunters were expert observers of their prey. In about a.d.
1550, a group of hunters visited a gully where they knew bison would congregate in late
March or April. Instead of just killing every animal on sight, they tended to concentrate
on the males. Speth believes this was because males are in better condition in spring,
and their bone marrow has a higher fat content. Hunters everywhere prefer fatter meat,
for it is an important source of energy and essential fatty acids. In spring, such flesh
was hard to come by, for the bison herds were recovering from the lean winter months.
So the hunters selected male bison at Garnsey, consuming only the choicest parts of the
carcass with the highest fat content.
Interpreting butchery techniques is a complicated matter, for many variables affect
the way in which the carcass is dismembered. Toughness of hide, available tools, size
and portability of the animal, and potential use for skins and horn are a few of the
variables. The only way to interpret body parts in this context is by understanding in
detail the cultural system that generated them. For instance, herders, finding a constant
surplus of males beyond their breeding requirements, may castrate some of these ani-
mals and then use them for riding and for dragging carts or plows. But even with some
insights into the cultural system and excellent bone preservation, it is frequently hard to
interpret the meaning of butchering techniques.
So many factors affect the counts of identified bones from any collection of ani-
mal remains that one must interpret the fragments in the context of artifact patterns,
site-formation processes, and all other sources of data potentially bearing on the behav-
ior of the people who killed the animals.
272 Come Tell Me How You Lived

Plant Remains
Animal bones tell only part of the subsistence story. Throughout human history, people
have relied heavily on plant foods of all kinds. For the past 12,000 years, they have
grown them as well. In many societies game meat formed far fewer meals than vege-
table foods, which are often completely invisible in archaeological sites. For example,
the !Kung San, present-day inhabitants of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa, know
of at least eighty-five edible seeds and roots. Most of the time they eat only eight of
these. The rest of the vegetable resource base provides a reliable cushion for this for-
aging population in times when key vegetable foods are scarce. Such people have a buf-
fer against famine that many farmers with their cleared lands, much higher population
densities, and crops that rely on regular rainfall rarely enjoy. The San’s lifeway raises a
question: is a farming life really to be preferred? A few studies of the skeletons of early
farming populations show how malnutrition due to food shortages was commonplace
in many areas.
Until about twenty-five years ago, most evidence for plant remains came from sites
in very dry environments – Hogup and Gatecliff in the Great Basin of the arid West are
two examples, much of the former’s deposits consisting very largely of chaff, seeds, and
other botanical remains. In Mexico’s Tehuacán Valley, Richard MacNeish assembled a
continuous sequence of human occupation for the period from 10,000 years ago to the
Spanish Conquest. He dug more than a dozen open sites and caves, all so dry that they
yielded 80,000 wild plant remains and 25,000 specimens of domestic corn. MacNeish
was able to identify diminutive maize cobs in several caves, which have been AMS
dated to about 2700 b.c. These early maize cobs were no more than 0.78 inches (2 cen-
timeters) long, but later ones were far larger. Unfortunately, MacNeish was unable to
identify the original wild ancestor of Tehuacán maize, now known to be a native grass
still growing in Mexico today – teosinte. The earliest maize cultivation in the Americas
currently dates to the sixth and fifth millennia b.c. on the basis of pollen grains at the
San Andrés site in lowland Veracruz, Mexico, and new evidence from the Panamanian
rainforest, dating to about 5000 b.c.
Under less-than-ideal preservation conditions elsewhere, the only plant remains that
survived are macrobotanical remains – easily recognizable items such as pine nuts,
maize cobs, charred nuts, or seeds preserved in a hearth or charcoal, very rarely remains
of cooked meals. Grain impressions preserved in wet clay pot walls occasionally pro-
vide information (Figure 11.6a). For example, Maya farmers in northern Belize cultivated
raised fields in wetlands. The waterlogged soils contained avocado, maize, and other
domesticated grass seeds. At Dust Cave in Alabama, already described in Chapter 7,
the inhabitants processed large quantities of hickory nuts and acorns, also black wal-
nuts, hackberry, and hazelnuts. But hickories were the dominant nut, the discarded shells
being used as fuel, for they have a high fat content and burn hot. Acorns were an import-
ant staple throughout the West and elsewhere. They have the disadvantage that they
require quite lengthy processing to leach out toxins, but they both provide protein-rich
food and have the priceless quality of being easily stored for months, an important con-
sideration for people living in arid environments with only seasonal nut harvests.
In recent years, major strides have been made in the study of plant remains using a
variety of lines of evidence that were previously unthinkable.
In recent years, paleoethnobotanists – scientists who recover, identify, and study
ancient vegetable remains and assess the relationships between people and plants –
have made major strides in the study of plant remains, using a variety of methods and
 Come Tell Me How You Lived 273

Figure 11.6 R
 ecovering evidence for gathering and agriculture. (a) A grain impression preserved
on a clay pot fragment from an early farming site in eastern England, approximately
2.2 inches (5.6 centimeters) in diameter. (b) Model of a water flotation device for
recovering plant remains using recycled water, developed by British botanist Gordon
Hillman. The lightest remains float to the surface and are caught in special sieves. The
heavier material sinks and is trapped in light nylon mesh.
((a): Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, Cambridge University. (b): Annick
Boothe after Hillman & Pearsall 1989. From Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn, Archaeology: Theories,
Methods, and Practice, New York: Thames and Hudson, Inc., 2001. Reprinted by permission.)
274 Come Tell Me How You Lived
lines of evidence that were unimaginable in earlier years. Some important methods of
recovering and studying plant remains are now routine:

• Flotation recovers tiny seeds and other botanical finds by passing soil samples
through water or chemicals (see Figure 11.6b). Flotation methods have revolution-
ized the study of ancient plants, for they provide large seed samples that can be
studied with statistical methods. At the Ali Kosh mound in Iran, Kent Flannery
and Frank Hole thought that plant remains were scarce. Then they used flotation
methods and recovered 40,000 seeds from the trenches. In recent years, botanists
have obtained literally pints of seed samples from the early farming village at Abu
Hureyra in Syria – samples so complete that botanist Gordon Hillman has been able
to chronicle major shifts in plant-gathering preferences over more than 3,000 years.
When Abu Hureyra was a small foraging settlement before 10,000 b.c., the people
relied heavily on acorns and other nut crops in nearby forests. But as the forests
retreated in the face of dry conditions, the people turned to wild cereal grasses,
which they soon domesticated to provide extra food supplies.
• Palynology (pollen analysis), described in Chapter 10, provides a wealth of infor-
mation not only about ancient environments but also about human activities.
Domesticated plants have characteristic pollen spores. So do cultivation weeds, like
Plantago lanceolata, described at the beginning of Chapter 10, which appear when
land is cleared for cultivation. Pollens are minute and can travel long distances,
which means that samples from an archaeological site provide but a generalized
impression of what people might have found to eat in the vicinity. Such impres-
sions can be invaluable. For example, the Paiute and Shoshone Indians of the Great
Basin relied heavily on upland plants such as piñon nuts, whereas the people living
near the Stillwater Marsh in the Carson Desert, Nevada, about a thousand years ago
appear to have relied almost entirely on plant foods from nearby wetlands. They
seem not to have walked 12 miles (20 kilometers) to obtain piñons from higher
ground.
• Opal phytoliths (minute particles of silica from plant cells absorbed through a
plant’s roots) take the form of the cells of the plants in which they are deposited.
They have been used to identify early maize use in Central America and the Andes
but are of most use for identifying the abundance of different grasses in occupation
deposits.
• Coprolites (desiccated human feces) are sometimes recovered from dry caves in the
American West and elsewhere. They provide unique information on ancient diets.
For instance, coprolites from Hidden Cave near Stillwater Marsh contained fragments
of bird, fish, and plant remains, among them bulrush millet and cattail pollen. Small
waterfowl feathers and the bones of the minnow-sized tui chub abounded, as did
insects and snails. The people who stopped at Hidden Cave ate a varied diet from
an environment where a wide range of foods were available.
• Bone chemistry Bone and stable isotopes, described earlier in the chapter, provide
valuable information on diet at a general level. For instance, the bone chemistry
of the inhabitants of Pecos Pueblo in the American Southwest shows that they ate
predominantly maize and very little meat. Northwest Coast populations tended to
have diets that relied heavily on maritime foods, as one would expect.

These are but a few of the methods that are now used to study ancient plant remains.
These inconspicuous, and hitherto often neglected, finds can yield valuable information
 Come Tell Me How You Lived 275
on important questions. Samples from flotation analysis can provide enough seeds to
record differences in seasonal occupation. For instance, a spring visit in search of one
form of edible grass that ripens in spring and is overwhelmingly abundant in the sam-
ple is clear evidence for seasonal occupation. But a word of caution: ancient environ-
ments differed often dramatically from those of today, so any study of plant use cannot
be divorced from a parallel understanding of the surrounding environment at the time.
Plants had, and still have, important symbolic and ritual associations in many soci-
eties, among them hallucinogenic mushrooms and peyote. Many ancient societies had
an encyclopedic knowledge of medicinal and poisonous plants for curing all manner of
diseases and for such esoterica as toxic arrowhead poisons and substances like aconite,
smeared by native Americans in Alaska on their whaling harpoons and lances.

Birds, Fish, and Mollusks

Bird bones, although very informative, are often neglected at the expense of larger
mammal remains. As long ago as 1926, Hildegarde Howard studied a large bird bone
collection from an Indian shell midden on the eastern shores of San Francisco Bay. The
inhabitants had hunted many waterbirds, especially cormorants, ducks, and geese.
When Howard looked more closely at the bones, she found that all of the geese were
migrant winter visitors that frequent the Bay Area between January and April. Nearly
all the cormorants were immature specimens, birds about five to six weeks old. What
time of the year had the Indians occupied the site, she wondered? Howard consulted
present-day records pertaining to when cormorants hatch and used these to estimate
what time of year the earlier inhabitants must have eaten the young cormorants. Based
on these records, she estimated the cormorants had been killed about June 28. She then
determined that the Indians must have lived there once in the winter and a second time
in the early summer.
The Howard study is a venerable classic, well worth citing, but there are numerous
more recent examples, including studies of a major shift in human subsistence during
the warming and rise in sea levels after the Ice Age, some 10,000 years ago. Many hunt-
ing groups in what is now the Baltic region trapped and killed large numbers of water-
fowl, including ducks and swans. Hunters in the Great Basin and in the Mississippi
Valley used decoys that allowed them to catch swimming waterfowl, many of them
during migratory visits in spring and autumn. The study of birds includes, of course,
not only hunting them but also the early domestication of chickens, geese, and later
turkeys. Nor should we forget that people kept falcons for hunting and other birds for
pleasure, activities sometimes reflected in archaeological sites. So is the trade in exotic
plumes flaunted by tropical birds like macaws, highly prized by Pueblo Indians in the
Southwest and traded north from tropical environments in Mexico.
Fishing, like bird hunting, became more important as people began to specialize in
different lifeways and adapt to highly specific environments. Evidence for fishing comes
from both artifacts and fragile fish bones, which, when they survive, can be identified
with considerable accuracy. Freshwater and ocean fish may be caught with nets or with
basketlike fish traps. Indians who lived on the site of modern Boston in about 2500 b.c.
built a dam of vertical stakes and brush. When the Atlantic tides rose, fish were directed
into gaps in the dam and trapped in huge numbers. Barbed fish spears and fishhooks
are relatively common finds in some archaeological sites, but such artifacts tell us little
about the weight of fishing in prehistoric subsistence. Did the people fish all year or
only when salmon were running? Did they concentrate on coastal species or venture far
276 Come Tell Me How You Lived
offshore in large canoes? Such questions can be answered only by examining the fish
bones themselves.
The Chumash Indians of southern California were remarkably skillful fishermen,
whose intensive fishing activities go back at least 5,000 years, probably longer. In later
times, they went far offshore in plank canoes to fish with hook and line, basket, net, and
harpoon. It was no surprise when the fish bones found on archaeological sites at the
Talepop site in southern California included not only the bones of such shallow-water fish
as the leopard shark and California halibut but the remains of albacore, ocean skip-jack,
and large rockfish, species that occur in deep water and can only be caught there. Early
Spanish accounts speak of more than 10,000 Indians living in the Santa Barbara area of
California alone, a large population indeed. Archaeology has shown that this maritime
population was able to exploit a very broad spectrum of marine resources, but despite
this abundance there were occasional famines.
Fishing, with its relatively predictable food resources and high protein potential,
allows much more sedentary settlement than other forms of hunting and gathering. The
Northwest Coast Indians enjoyed a very rich maritime culture based on ocean fishing
and salmon runs that enabled large numbers of people to live in one area for long peri-
ods and to build permanent dwellings.
In medieval times and later, the Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua, became a staple part
of European diet. Easily dried and salted, butterflied cod from the Lofoten Islands
off northern Norway served as hardtack for Norse seamen voyaging to Iceland and
Labrador. Thousands of cod bones from sites in Iceland and in the Lofotens dating to
after a.d. 1000 document highly standardized curing methods and a preference for
medium-sized cod, up to 3 feet long. Catholic doctrines of meatless holy days, Fridays,
and Lent created a huge demand for cod, which endured into modern times.
Shellfish from seashore, lake, or river supplied a good portion of the prehistoric diet
for many thousands of years. In places like Japan and Scandinavia, they were an import-
ant food during the lean months of late winter and early spring. Freshwater mollusks
were important both to California Indians and to prehistoric people living in the south-
eastern United States. Most mollusks have limited food value, and so great quantities
are needed to feed even a few people. One estimate for 100 people’s mollusk needs for
a month runs as high as 3 tons. In all probability, mollusks were more a supplemental
food at set times of the year than a staple. They were simply too much effort to collect
in sufficient quantity.
Even sporadic collecting led to rapidly accumulating piles of shells (shell middens) at
strategic points on lake or ocean shores, near rocky outcrops or tidal pools where mol-
lusks were commonly found. Shell midden excavations in California and elsewhere have
yielded thousands of shells, which are counted, identified, and also measured to check for
size changes. When Claude Warren sampled a shell midden near San Diego, California,
he found five major species of shellfish commonly exploited by the inhabitants. The earli-
est shellfish collectors concentrated on the bay mussel and oysters, both of which flourish
on rocky shores. But by 4000 b.c., the lagoon by the shell middens had so silted up that
mud-loving scallops and Venus shells were now collected, for the earlier species were
unable to flourish in the new, sandy environment. Soon afterward, however, the lagoon
became clogged and the shellfish collectors moved away, never to return. Their aban-
doned seashells told the story of the changing environment around the sites.
Both freshwater and saltwater shells were widely used as ornaments in prehistoric
times. Gulf Coast shells were bartered over enormous distances of the southeastern
and midwestern United States to peoples who had never seen the ocean. Sometimes
 Come Tell Me How You Lived 277
such ornaments could assume incredible prestige value. When nineteenth-century
explorer David Livingstone visited Chief Shinte in central Africa in 1855, he found
him wearing two seashells that had come over 994 miles (1,590 kilometers) inland
from the distant East African coast. The chief told him that two such shells would
buy a slave; five would buy a large ivory elephant tusk. Small wonder that enter-
prising merchants were trading china replicas of these shells in central Africa half a
century later.

Rock Art
Sometimes prehistoric rock art gives vivid insight into subsistence activities of long ago,
such as hunts and fishing expeditions. Hunter-gatherers and fishing cultures have left
behind paintings of their daily life on the walls of caves and rockshelters. In recent years,
South African archaeologist David Lewis-Williams and others have used oral traditions
and nineteenth-century ethnographies to develop interpretations of some of the rituals
depicted in the paintings. However, the art also has a valuable role to play in the inter-
pretation of subsistence activities. Careful examination of these paintings can take us
back centuries and millennia to the time when people were killing the animals whose
bones lie in occupation deposits under the observer’s feet. Many details of weapons,
domestic equipment, and hunting and fishing methods can be discerned in these vivid
scenes.
The Stone Age paintings of southern Africa have long been known not only for their
representations of important symbolic rituals in hunter-gatherer life but also for their
depictions of life in prehistoric times. At the Tsoelike River rockshelter in Lesotho, south-
ern Africa, paintings show fishermen assembled in their boats. They have cornered a
shoal of fish that are swimming around in confusion. Some boats have lines that seem to
be anchors. The fishermen are busy spearing their quarry. Another famed scene depicts
a peacefully grazing herd of ostriches. Among them lurks a hunter wearing an ostrich
skin, his legs and bow protruding beneath the belly of the apparently harmless bird.
One can only wonder if his hunt was successful.
The artists painted big-game hunts, honey collectors, women gathering fruit, cat-
tle raids, even red-coated British soldiers. Scenes like these take us back to hot days
when a small group of hunters pursued their wounded quarry until it weakened and
collapsed. The hunters, having stalked their prey for hours, relax in the shade as they
watch its death throes. Then they settle down to butcher the dead animal before carry-
ing the meat and skin home to be shared with their group. Few artifacts survive from
scenes such as these, but the objective of reconstructing ancient subsistence patterns is
to re-create, from the few patterned traces that have survived in the soil, just such long
days in the sun.

SUMMARY
1. Archaeological evidence for subsistence comes from artifacts and food remains,
with animal bones forming the most common source of information.
2. Reconstructing entire diets is much harder, for the proportions of different foods in
the diet have to be established. Bog corpses, human feces, and stable carbon isotope
analysis provide invaluable information on ancient diets.
278 Come Tell Me How You Lived

Figure 11.7 T
 wo Ancient Egyptian fishing boats raise a seine net on the Nile. A model from the
tomb of Chancellor Meketre, c. 1975 b . c.
(Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy)

3. Fragmentary animal bones broken up for food (zooarchaeology) provide informa-

tion on hunting and herding, requiring careful analysis of the minimum numbers of
species present and counts of the minimum number of individuals.
4. Zooarchaeology can sometimes provide information on hunting preferences, butch-
ery, seasonal occupation of camps, and early domesticated animals and animal
husbandry.
5. Wild and domesticated plant remains can be studied in carbonized seed form, or as
imprints on clay pot walls, but flotation methods provide larger statistical samples
for analyses of changing foraging and farming practices. AMS radiocarbon dating
lets researchers date individual seeds or cobs, providing new information on the
origins of food production.
6. Birds, fish remains, and shellfish are invaluable sources on seasonal occupation and
intensive foraging in many parts of the world.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What are the uses and limitations of zooarchaeology for reconstructing ancient
subsistence?
 Come Tell Me How You Lived 279
2. How has flotation revolutionized our understanding of ancient foraging and
farming?
3. How do archaeologists study ancient diets? What are the limitations of dietary
research in archaeology?

FURTHER READING
Zooarchaeology is well served by S. J. M. Davis, The Archaeology of Animals (London: Batsford,
1987). See also Elizabeth J. Reitz and Elizabeth S. Wing, Zooarchaeology, 2nd edn. (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Lewis Binford’s widely read and controversial Bones
(New York: Academic Press, 1981) is an essay about the basic problems of animal bones
in archaeological sites. For plants, see Kristin D. Sobolik, Archaeobiology (Walnut Creek,
CA: AltaMira Press, 2003), the fifth volume in the Archaeologist’s Toolkit series. Deborah Pearsall,
Paleoethnobotany: A Handbook of Procedures, 2nd edn. (San Diego: Academic Press, 2009), is an excel-
lent starting point. See also E. N. Anderson et al., eds., Ethnobiology (New York: Wiley-Blackwell,
2011). For the origins of agriculture, see Graeme Barker, The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). David Hams and Gordon Hillman, eds., Foraging and
Farming (London: Unwin Hayman, 1989), is a fundamental source on plant remains of all kinds.
Three manuals are useful, all published by Cambridge University Press: Dale Serjeantson, Birds
(2009), Alwyne Wheeler and Andrew K. G. Jones, Fishes (1989), and Cheryl Claassen, Shells
(1998).
newgenprepdf

12 Settlement and Landscape

CHAPT ER OU TL I N E
Settlement Patterns 283
Households 284
Communities 289
Distribution of Communities 292
Geographic Information Systems and Roman Wroxeter, England 294
Population 296
The Archaeology of Landscapes 296
Sacred Landscapes: Mirrors of the Intangible 299
Maeshowe and the Stones of Stenness 300

The earthworks of Avebury, England.

(Loop Images Ltd / Alamy)
 Settlement and Landscape 281

PREVIEW
Chapter 12 moves away from the study of individual sites, artifacts, and food remains
into changing ancient settlement patterns. We examine the hierarchy of human settle-
ment from individual sites to entire regions and discuss some of the methods used to
study them, including geographic information systems. Landscapes are distinct from
settlement patterns, for they are humanly perceived and change constantly through
time. We discuss ways in which archaeologists study sacred and secular landscapes in a
search for the intangible beliefs of ancient societies.
“I am my own aborigine,” Irish archaeologist Seamus Caulfield once commented.
We were standing on the forbidding limestone cliffs of County Mayo in northwestern
Ireland, gazing at the rolling bogland of Céide Fields. Caulfield grew up in nearby
Belderigg, a hamlet of small houses surrounded by ancient field walls built and rebuilt
over thousands of years. As a small boy, he went barefoot for six months of the year,
feeling underfoot the texture of narrow pathways, marshlands, and small fields. Years
later, Seamus Caulfield still has a tactile relationship with his home community and
with the farmland that once sustained it, the kind of close relationship with environ-
ment and landscape once enjoyed by preindustrial societies all over the globe. He calls
these familiar farmlands his “landscape of memory.” Thanks to archaeology, Caulfield
has traced his ancestry back on this land to a long-forgotten Stone Age field system built
before 3000 b.c.
Caulfield inherited a passion for archaeology from his schoolteacher father, who had
discovered stone walls deep under the peat that mantles the local landscape. In 1983,
he began to map the buried stone walls at nearby Céide Fields. First, he tried using aer-
ial photographs to identify the field systems, but the peat covered everything. Then he
turned to the low-tech tools of his youth, a 6-foot-long (2-meter-long) iron T-bar and a
special spade used for cutting peat sods. Caulfield and his students laid out lines across
the hills and ran transects of probes at 1-foot (0.3-meter) intervals across the bogland.
The peat was much shallower where the buried stone walls lay. Soon, hundreds of bam-
boo poles marked walls and fields.
Season after season, Caulfield returned to Céide Fields until he had mapped more
than 4 square miles (6.4 square kilometers) of intact farming landscape, undisturbed
since 2400 b.c. (see Figure 12.1). With the help of geologists and palynologists, Caulfield
showed that the warmer and wetter climate after the Ice Age brought pine forests to
the area. Tree rings tell us that the forest suddenly vanished in 2800 b.c., opening up
grassland ideal for cattle grazing. For nearly 500 years, small groups of farmers sepa-
rated their pastures with low stone walls, dividing the land into a patchwork of lines,
rectangles, and squares. Each family lived in a small thatched round house set within a
stone enclosure amidst a mosaic of constantly changing fields modified over successive
generations.
After five centuries, the damp climate defeated the farmers. Wet bog, with its mosses,
heathers, and moor grass, spread inexorably across the hills. The grasslands vanished,
the cattle herders retreated inland, and the boundary walls disappeared under peat.
County Mayo was a peaceful part of Ireland. No Roman armies or social catastrophes
disrupted life at Céide Fields, ensuring a high level of cultural continuity in this corner
of Ireland. Seamus Caulfield’s family has lived at Belderigg for generations. Thanks to
his research, he feels he can safely claim himself as an “aborigine,” a distant descendant
of the local farmers of some 200 generations ago.
The Céide Fields project is a classic example of settlement archaeology, the topic of
this ­chapter – the ways in which archaeologists study households, communities, and
282 Settlement and Landscape

Figure 12.1 Céide Fields, County Mayo, Ireland. The visitor center is in the background.
(PHOTOBYTE / Alamy)

ancient cultural landscapes. The next two chapters widen our focus away from single
sites and artifacts to the broader compass of ancient societies and the ways in which
they interacted with one another. This chapter examines ways in which archaeologists
study ancient settlement patterns and landscapes; Chapter 13 discusses interactions
between individuals and groups, forensics, and ancient trade.
The toolkits and food remains found in archaeological sites reflect their inhabitants’
material culture and subsistence activities. Hunter-gatherers tend to have portable tool-
kits, manufactured for the most part from organic materials that do not survive well in
archaeological sites (see Figure 9.11 on p. 232). Many of their sites are temporary camps.
Rarely can the archaeologist look at the patterning of artifacts and food remains in such
camps, for many are gone forever. But the more sedentary farmer settles much longer
in one spot and is confronted with much more elaborate annual tasks. The farmer has
to store each year’s food surplus, too, an activity that immediately adds complexity to a
farming settlement. Substantial houses, storage pits, cemeteries, threshing floors, cattle
enclosures – all of these can be elements in even a small farming village.
Archaeologists study patterning in such structures as houses and storage pits just as
thoroughly as they study artifacts and food remains. They also analyze distributions in
time and space of different communities and relationships between them. These activ-
ities are classified as settlement archaeology, which reveals the many ways in which
individual communities relate to one another – through trade, religious beliefs, and
social ties, among others. Settlement archaeology research requires a combination of
common sense and careful mapping and surveying along with fine-grained excavation
and, often, high-technology science.
 Settlement and Landscape 283

Settlement Patterns
Settlement archaeology is part of the analysis of human interactions with, and adapta-
tions to, the natural and social environment. The houses and villages of a prehistoric
society, like the artifacts and food residues beside their hearths, are part of the settle-
ment pattern. This pattern involves relationships among people who decided – for
practical, political, economic, ideological, and social reasons – to place their houses,
settlements, and religious structures where they did. Settlement archaeology also allows
us to examine the relationships among different communities and trading networks, as
well as ways in which people exploited both their environment and social organization.
By studying settlement patterns, we have a chance to examine the intangible factors that
caused culture change in ancient times.
For instance, the Chumash Indians of southern California lived on the islands and
shores of the Santa Barbara Channel, where natural ocean upwelling nourished one
of the richest inshore fisheries on earth. Seven hundred years ago, this rich bounty of
marine resources allowed the Chumash to live in densely populated, permanent settle-
ments with as many as 1,000 inhabitants. The most important of these villages clustered
at sheltered spots on the coast with good canoe landings, kelp fisheries close offshore,
and sea mammal rookeries within easy reach. If you find a series of coastal Chumash
settlements in sheltered positions that protected them from the southeastern storms
of winter, you can reasonably assume there were sound, practical reasons behind the
site distribution. Within the village itself, we know that a complex variety of social,
economic, and even personal factors dictated the layout of houses in relation to one
another.
At another level, an entire village or city may reflect a society’s view of their world
and the cosmos. The ancient Mesoamericans placed great emphasis on lavish pub-
lic ceremonies set in the heart of large ceremonial centers. Fifteen hundred years ago,
great lowland Maya cities like Copán and Tikal were replicas in stone and stucco of
the layered Mesoamerican spiritual world of the heavens, the living world, and the
underworld (see Figure 3.7 on p. 71). Their pyramids were sacred mountains, the door-
ways of the temples atop them the sacred openings by which the ruler, as intermediary
with the spiritual world, traveled to the Otherworld up and down the Wacah Chan, the
symbolic World Tree that connected the layers of the Maya universe. A thousand years
later, the vast plaza of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, stood at the center of the ancient
Mexican world. When Spaniard Hernán Cortes and his conquistadors climbed to the
summit of the great temple of the sun god Huitzilopochtli and the rain god Tlaloc in
1519, they stood at the axis of the Aztec universe. The four quarters of the Aztec world
radiated from a temple so sacred that pyramid after pyramid rose at the same location
(see Figure 6.4 on p. 136).
The relationship between an individual and the landscape can be as complex as that
of an entire society. A central African farmer once showed BF his land, a patchwork of
small gardens, some intensely cultivated, others lying fallow as the soil regenerated
after years of use. He saw just land until the owner pointed out the subtle signs of
regenerating soil, different kinds of grasses to be eaten by his cattle in the weeks ahead,
the flowering nut trees that would come into harvest at the end of the wet season. The
landscape came alive, a quilt of gardens, plants, and animals protected by his ances-
tors, who were now the spiritual guardians of the land. The farmer’s relationship to his
surroundings was a “landscape of memory,” built from generations of his own and his
predecessors’ experience.
284 Settlement and Landscape

Figure 12.2 Households and community: An artist’s impression of houses and shrines from the
town of Çatalhöyük, Turkey, in about 6000 b.c. The close juxtaposition of houses,
entered through their roofs, provided insulation against climatic extremes and pro-
tection against enemies. Çatalhöyük, an important farming center, owed much of its
importance to trade in fine-grained obsidian, which was mined nearby. In its heyday,
it was one of the largest human settlements in the world.
(DeAgostini / Getty Images)

Settlement archaeology is about these many layers of dynamic relationships, some of

which are nearly impossible to discern without the careful use of analogy with living
societies. For working purposes, many archaeologists divide these layers of relationship
into a loose hierarchy of three general levels – households, communities, and distribu-
tion of communities (see Figure 12.2).

Households
The eruption came as a sudden rumble that shook the Maya village at the end of the
day 1,400 years ago, just as everyone was finishing their evening meal. An underground
fissure less than a mile away had erupted with little warning. Clouds of ash and gases
darkened the sky. The villagers fled for their lives, leaving their dirty dishes behind
them. Within a few days, the tiny hamlet and its surrounding fields lay under 15 feet
(4.6 meters) of ash.
 Settlement and Landscape 285
About 1,400 years later, a bulldozer operator leveling the ground for grain silos acci-
dentally uncovered the corner of a thatched hut mantled in ash. The Maya village at
Cerén, El Salvador, is an extraordinary archaeological treasure, a prehistoric settlement
frozen in time (see Figure 9.9 on p. 228). Archaeologist Payson Sheets has plotted the
contents of entire Cerén houses. One household lived in a complex of four buildings: a
kitchen, a workshop, a storehouse, and a residence where the inhabitants socialized, ate,
and slept. Sheets and his colleagues found grindstones still standing on forked sticks
that elevated them above the ground, even a well-tended garden near the storehouse
with three species of medicinal herbs, each plant standing in its own mound of soil.
A nearby field held ridges of young maize plants 8 to 15 inches (20 to 38 centimeters)
high, typical August growth in this environment.
The Cerén excavations reveal humble Maya households going about their daily busi-
ness, their artifacts preserving by chance the one moment in the day when men, women,
and children were all together for the evening meal. Archaeological sites like Cerén are
archives of human interactions, where patterns of artifacts, food remains, and other
material finds provide vital information on ancient human behavior. Few sites have the
exceptional preservation found at Cerén, but many contain informative patternings of
artifacts that reflect activities of all kinds.
When Kent Flannery and his students excavated farming villages in the Valley of Oaxaca,
Mexico, dating to between 1350 and 850 b.c., they not only uncovered and recorded the
one-room, thatched, pole-and-mud houses but plotted the associated artifact patterns as
well. They carefully distinguished between the house with its contents and the cluster of
household storage pits, graves, and garbage heaps that lay nearby. The researchers plotted
household features very carefully and identified areas where special activities took place
from the specialist toolkits – for bead making and obsidian toolmaking – associated with
them (see Figure 12.3). Every household obtained, processed, and stored food, although
the types of food consumed by each varied. Some Oaxacan households also spent much
time making stone tools or ornaments. These specialist activities presumably supplied the
needs of the community as a whole. In this Mexican example, and in all studies of individ-
ual structures, the artifacts and activities associated with them are just as important to the
archaeologist as the design and layout of the structure itself.
We should never forget that households are chronicles of human interactions, com-
munities even more so. Archaeological sites, whether small hunting camps, humble
farming villages, or vast cities, are archives of human interaction. People lived and died
in these places. They grew up, got married, had children, and quarreled with neighbors.
These daily interactions between men and women, rich and poor, traders and their cus-
tomers, slaves and masters come down to us in the form of distinctive artifact pattern-
ings and community settlement patterns. The anonymous testimony of artifacts from
individual houses, from neighborhoods, palaces, and temples, reveals the full, and often
unsuspected, diversity of ancient human communities (see Figure 12.4).
Households require slow-moving area excavation so that the exact position of every
artifact, features such as hearths or pits, and the tiniest of food remains like seeds and
broken animal bones can be recorded electronically and photographically before any-
thing is lifted from the dwelling. Sometimes, I’ve managed to identify the activities of
different individuals while still excavating the house floor: stoneworking activity sur-
viving as a scatter of stone tools and the waste flakes and cores used to make them;
butchering of a rabbit by a cluster of broken bones. More often, however, the database in
the laboratory computer is the best source of information, allowing you, for example, to
call up the position of every potsherd of a certain style or all ox forelimb bones. It is then
that you discern unexpected associations, subtle signposts to long-forgotten domestic
286 Settlement and Landscape

Figure 12.3 P
 lan of a house at Tierra Largas, Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, from around 900 b.c. , with
selected artifacts plotted on the floor.

activities or even of children playing. Short of a burial or a house belonging to a known

historical individual, this is about as close as you can get in archaeology to individuals
as opposed to households. This type of excavation is invaluable when studying male
and female roles or the cultural diversity of a household revealed by distinctive artifacts.
Like a shipwreck on the seabed, a well-excavated ancient house can be a sealed
capsule of a moment in the past, which can be read by an expert like a book (see the
Discovery box on pp. 287–289).
 Settlement and Landscape 287

Figure 12.4 A
 bu Hureyra, Syria. Excavations in the earlier settlement showing interconnecting
pits that were roofed with poles, branches, and reeds to form small huts. Part of a
later rectangular house can be seen at a higher level (top right).
(Andrew Moore)

Discovery
Households at Marki, Cyprus, c. 2200 B.C.
Studying households requires not only meticulous excavation but also a careful look at the
social changes behind changes in dwellings and, indeed, in entire communities. Few field
projects have achieved this, but recent discoveries on Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean
are a step in the right direction. The Bronze Age village at Marki was occupied for between
500 and 600 years after 2400 B.C. During these five or six centuries, the village grew from
a community of a few households into a much larger 15-acre (6-hectare) settlement with
narrow alleys before declining and then being abandoned. The maximum population was
about 400 people. Marki was both a self-sufficient farming community and a copper min-
ing settlement, exploiting outcrops in the nearby Troodos Mountains. David Frankel and
Jennifer Webb (2006) have excavated about 21,500 square feet (6,555 square meters) of
the settlement, which enabled them to study the changing ways in which the inhabitants
used the space available to them (Figure 12.5).
The excavators identified thirty-three compounds, which they consider separate house-
holds. Some were in use for centuries, others for shorter periods of time. Most of the
compounds were rectangular courtyards with small, enclosed rooms built of mud-brick on
stone foundations. The rooms had plaster wall benches, hearths, and clay ovens; narrow
alleys linked the houses. Most of the compounds were remodeled and renovated, partly
because mud-brick buildings decay relatively fast. Typically, the builders would tear down
the mud-brick walls and rebuild on the existing foundations, which were constrained by
288 Settlement and Landscape

the dimensions of the compound. Frankel and Webb were able to subdivide Marki into nine
phases, each representing what they call a “palimpsest” of perhaps three generations of
activity. Throughout the settlement’s history, each household lived in a rectangular court-
yard with covered rooms at the back. There was nothing in the houses or the artifacts asso-
ciated with them that hinted at different wealth levels between households. The inhabitants
never followed a master plan for the community over many generations. Compounds were
added haphazardly and cumulatively. As time went on, the population increased, with a
continual process of negotiation over space under way. The village, once a hamlet of free-
standing structures, became a tightly packed built-up area with relatively little open space
and limited access to individual compounds.
The cycle of rebuilding and renovation of dwellings occupied over long periods of time
clearly suggests that houses were inherited by each generation from its predecessor,
remaining occupied by well-established families. Two compounds in particular maintained
their boundaries for three or four centuries and may have exercised considerable author-
ity as a result. One of them even maintained an offshoot household, which was intercon-
nected to it for several generations before becoming larger and finally becoming a separate
compound.
While many details of the negotiations that accompanied the enlargement or subdivision
of household spaces will always elude us, some general trends are notable. There was
a move toward greater privacy, both within compounds and houses, reflected by the full
enclosure of compounds and also the eventual separation of sets of compounds from one
another.
During the earliest generations of the settlement, the inner rooms of compounds faced
into a minimally enclosed courtyard in which a wide range of activities took place. This
implies a high degree of social and economic cooperation between individual house-
holds in a tiny community of about forty people. Within a century or so of first settlement,
self-contained households came into being, now secure enough to survive as individual

Figure 12.5 House compounds at Marki, Cyprus.

(David Frankel and Jennifer Webb, La Trobe University, Australia.)
 Settlement and Landscape 289

economic units. By this time, population increases and larger families may have led to each
maintaining its own dwellings and land. But the one adjoining compound suggests that
there was an increasing emphasis on extended family relationships.
Marki reflects the kinds of profound economic and social changes that can be identified
through careful excavation of individual households within a small community. After gen-
erations of constant interaction between everyone in the community, a more impersonal
village developed, where people tended to live in enclosed compounds and knew well only
the people in their own neighborhoods. Simultaneously, new mechanisms for social control
may have developed at Marki, which involved such intangibles as ties of kin and obliga-
tions between members of extended families. We will never know.

Communities
Every household member interacts with other members of the household and with
individuals in other households within the community. And entire households inter-
act with other households as well. Once we begin to look at a community of house-
holds, new complexities enter the picture. The first is permanency of settlement, which
is affected primarily by the realities of subsistence and ecology. How long San forager
camps in Africa’s Kalahari Desert are occupied is determined by availability of water,
game, and vegetable foods near the site; the camp moves at regular intervals. In con-
trast, the farmers of Çatalhöyük, a Turkish farming settlement established by around
7500 b . c . , lived in the same crowded village of mud houses separated by narrow alleys
for many centuries because they were anchored to their nearby fields (see Figure 12.2
on p. 284).
In such small communities, family and kin ties were of overwhelming importance,
affecting the layout of houses, household compounds, and groups of dwellings. By
mapping and analyzing artifact patterns and house inventories, you can sometimes find
traces of different residential clusters within a single community. Kent Flannery and a
University of Michigan research team used such data plots to find at least four residen-
tial wards (barrios) within the rapidly growing village of San José Mogote, which flour-
ished in Mexico’s Valley of Oaxaca after 1350 b.c. A trash-filled erosion gully separated
each cluster of square thatched houses from its neighbors.
Small communities, like cities, are never static entities. People’s children grow
up, marry, and start new households nearby. Houses burn down or collapse, so new
dwellings take their place. As often happened with Iroquois villages in the American
Northeast, a settlement would outgrow its fortifications, then erect an extended pal-
isade to protect new longhouses (see Figure 7.8 on p. 168). The study of an ancient
community is a study of constant interactions between individuals, household groups,
and members of the settlement discerned through the careful study of activity areas
(places where individuals carried out specific tasks like food preparation) and artifact
patternings.
The behaviors and interactions of people living in much larger communities like cit-
ies are also reflected in artifact patternings and in the settlement pattern of the city
as a whole. Whereas economic and environmental realities often affect the siting of a
smaller community, more complex factors such as religious authority come into play
with ancient cities. For example, the city of Eridu in southern Iraq was the largest human
settlement on earth in 4000 b.c. Eridu lay close to the Euphrates River, with easy access
to the wider world of the Persian Gulf. Perhaps 5,000 people clustered in the crowded
290 Settlement and Landscape

Figure 12.6 A reconstruction of the ziggurat temple at Eridu, Iraq.

precincts of the city, which at first was little more than an agglomeration of villages of
close kin or specialist artisans living close to one another for mutual protection and
economic interest. They lived in the shadow of the great mud-brick ziggurat temple
mound of the god Enlil, a veritable artificial mountain that reached toward the wide
heavens above (see Figure 12.6). Eridu’s temple was the highest point in the flat coun-
tryside for many miles around, a symbol of an intensely sacred place favored by the
gods. Compelling political and religious factors helped determine the site of Eridu, the
chosen city of Enlil. Like many other ancient cities, this oldest of human cities was a
symbolic center of the universe, the holiest place on earth.
The largest community settlement pattern ever investigated systematically is that
of Teotihuacán, Mexico, where René Millon has mapped dozens of residential com-
pounds, a market, and vast ceremonial structures (see Figure 12.7). He even found
special quarters where foreigners from Oaxaca and lowland Veracruz on the Gulf of
Mexico – revealed by their distinctive architecture and pottery – lived for centuries in
an alien city. Millon sought the answers to many questions. What social classes existed
in the city? What specialist crafts were practiced and where? How many people lived
at Teotihuacán at different periods? The only way to answer such questions was to map
the entire city and make comprehensive surface collections and test excavations to give
an overall picture of the total settlement pattern.
Thanks to the mapping project data, we know that teeming neighborhoods of
single-story, flat-roofed, rectangular apartment compounds complete with courtyards
and passageways lay beyond the enormous ceremonial precincts of the city. Narrow
alleyways and streets about 12 feet (3.7 meters) wide separated each compound from
its neighbors. Each housed between 20 and 100 people, perhaps members of the same
kin group. Judging from artifact patternings, some sheltered skilled artisans, families of
obsidian and shell ornament makers, weavers, and potters.
What was life like inside Teotihuacán’s anonymous apartment compounds (barrios)?
Mexican archaeologist Linda Manzanilla has investigated one such complex close to
the northwest edge of Teotihuacán, searching for traces of different activities within the
complex. The stucco floors in the apartments and courtyards had been swept clean, so
Manzanilla and her colleagues used chemical analysis of the floor deposits to search for
 Settlement and Landscape 291

Figure 12.7 P
 yramid of the Sun, Teotihuacán, Valley of Mexico. The pyramid and other structures
at Teotihuacán formed the core of a vast prehistoric city. The great mass of the pyra-
mid was designed as part of a setting for grandiose public ceremonies, which were a
common feature of Mesoamerican religious beliefs. Teotihuacán was a city conceived
on a grand scale, its ceremonial precincts designed to give the visitor a sense of the
power of the gods and the forces of the spiritual world.
(Dmitry Rukhlenko – Travel Photos / Alamy)

human activities. She developed a mosaic of different chemical readings, such as high
phosphate readings where garbage had rotted and dense concentrations of carbonate
from lime (used in the preparation of both tortillas and stucco) that indicated cooking
or building activity. Manzanilla’s chemical plans of the compound are accurate enough
to pinpoint the locations of cooking fires and eating places where the inhabitants con-
sumed such animals as deer, rabbits, and turkeys. She was able to identify three families
totaling about thirty people who lived in three separate apartments within this commu-
nity inside a much larger community. Each apartment had specific areas for sleeping,
eating, religious activities, and funeral rites.
Teotihuacán’s barrios have revealed intense interactions between people who knew
one another well and between these tight-knit communities and the wider universe of
the city itself. Walking along one of the cleared streets, you can imagine passing down
the same defile 1,500 years earlier, each side bounded by a bare, stuccoed compound
wall. Occasionally, a door opens onto the street, offering a view of a shady courtyard, of
pots and textiles drying in the sun. The street would have been a cacophony of smells
and sounds – wood smoke, dogs barking, the monotonous scratch of maize grinders,
the soft voices of women weaving, the passing scent of incense.
292 Settlement and Landscape

Figure 12.8 A site hierarchy in Mesoamerica. (a) Simplified hierarchy of site types. (b) Hypothetical
site hierarchy on the ground, with the major regional center serving secondary centers spaced at
regular intervals. These in turn serve larger villages and their networks of hamlets.

Distribution of Communities
No human being has ever lived in complete isolation, for even the smallest
hunter-gatherer family group has at least fleeting contacts with neighboring bands at
certain times of the year. But as human societies become more complex and settlements
more lasting, intercommunity relationships become much more complicated. Different
settlements depend more and more on one another for essential raw materials (such as
salt or copper ore) and for specialist products (stone knives, religious ornaments, and
the like). Growing villages might split into two settlements that, although separated in
space, still maintain close ties of kinship. Human settlement patterns are not just site
dots on maps. They are complex and constantly changing networks of human inter-
action, of trade, religion, and social ties, of differing adaptations to local environmental
challenges.
For years, the study of community distributions depended on large-scale archaeo-
logical surveys that combined aerial photographs with months of systematic foot survey
on the ground. Such studies began with the development of a classification of archaeo-
logical sites in a region. Each of these site types has a relationship to others, the total
distribution of all site types making up a settlement pattern. Each site type is defined
by the characteristic structures, artifact patterns, food remains, and small finds therein.
These definitions provide us with a way to organize the sites into a hierarchy of succes-
sive levels of settlements (see Figure 12.8). For instance, the Maya city of Copán was a
major ritual and trade center, the seat of an important kingdom. A hierarchy of second-
ary centers, small towns, villages, and tiny hamlets lay throughout the city’s territory,
 Settlement and Landscape 293

Figure 12.9 A
 simple example of site catchment analysis, not using GIS, from the Valley of Oaxaca,
Mexico. The inhabitants of this farming village, occupied between 1150 and 850
b . c., obtained their basic agricultural needs within a radius of less than 1.5 miles
(2.4 kilometers). Common minerals and seasonal plant foods were found within the
3-mile (5-kilometer) circle, game meat and construction materials within a 9-mile
(14.4-kilometer) radius. (Radii in kilometers.)

each dependent on the others, and each with a well-defined position in the hypothet-
ical pyramid of human settlement. Trading and the payment of tribute played a major
role in linking the different layers of this and other settlement hierarchies in the ancient
world. So did the availability of food and other resources within the immediate vicin-
ity of a settlement. Eric Higgs of Cambridge University developed a method known as
site catchment analysis, which inventories resources within different radiuses of sites,
an effective way of defining where people obtained food and other commodities (see
Figure 12.9).
William Sanders and a large research team from Pennsylvania State University sur-
veyed the entire Basin of Mexico, center of the Aztec civilization, in the 1970s. They com-
piled distribution maps of every known archaeological site and plotted them against
comprehensive environmental data, with dramatic results. Sanders showed how the
294 Settlement and Landscape
population of the Basin ebbed and flowed over many centuries, with the rise and fall
of the great city of Teotihuacán in the first millennium a.d. The most dramatic changes
came some centuries later when the growing Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, achieved over-
whelming dominance. By the end of the fifteenth century a.d., the imperial capital
housed at least 200,000 people living in dense residential areas now buried under the
concrete jungle of Mexico City (see Figure 6.4 on p. 136). The concentration of sites
nearby was such that Sanders estimated at least 400,000 city and country dwellers occu-
pied a 230-square-mile (368-square-kilometer) zone of foothills, plains, and lake bed
areas near the capital. He calculated that about a million people lived within the confines
of the Basin of Mexico at the time. Tenochtitlán was a magnet to outlying populations.
Its very presence skewed the entire settlement pattern of the Basin. So many people
lived there that the Aztecs farmed every local environment in the region to ensure there
was enough food to go around.
Tenochtitlán stood at the center of an organized landscape created by ambitious rul-
ers who thought nothing of creating about 25,000 acres (10,000 hectares) of highly pro-
ductive swamp gardens in the southern part of the Basin alone. Over less than two
centuries, the local settlement pattern changed from a patchwork of small states and
major centers to a highly centralized agricultural landscape capable of meeting the basic
food needs of at least half a million people.
Few settlement patterns show such dramatic changes as those in the Basin of Mexico.
Sanders was a pioneer in combining environmental and archaeological data in settle-
ment archaeology, but his project was unsophisticated by the standards of some of
today’s projects, which rely on high technology to integrate field surveys with a wide
variety of spatial data.

Geographic Information Systems and Roman

Wroxeter, England
Virconium Cornoviorum, the Roman town at present-day Wroxeter near Shrewsbury
in west-central England, was the fourth-largest urban center in Roman Britain.
Wroxeter started as a legionary camp in a . d. 60, then became a town thirty years
later, flourishing until the fifth or sixth century. Most Roman towns lie under mod-
ern cities like London or York. Fortunately for archaeologists, much of Wroxeter is
in open country. For more than a century, generations of excavators investigated the
major public buildings and commercial zone of the town. They used aerial photo-
graphs and surface collections of potsherds and other artifacts to plot the general
outlines of the settlement and to develop a detailed chronology of its buildings.
However, these simple approaches could not answer fundamental questions about the
history of a once-strategic military gateway into neighboring and unconquered Wales. Many
Roman forts and camps lie close to the town. What impact did these army encampments
have on the rural population? What were the consequences of the Roman conquest on local
Iron Age farmers? Archaeologist Vince Gaffney and an international team of researchers
have combined the powerful technology of geographic information systems (GIS) with aer-
ial photographs and ground survey to provide some answers (for GIS, see Chapter 6).
The Wroxeter archaeologists could draw on a massive archive of aerial photographs
of the surrounding countryside, taken under every kind of weather condition imagin-
able over more than half a century. They located over forty farming enclosures and the
remains of a once-extensive field system. The researchers “warped” digital images of the
aerial photographs onto Britain’s national map grid, turning the images into GIS maps
 Settlement and Landscape 295

Figure 12.10 G
 IS data derived from many sources, including generations of aerial photographs,
provided the background data for the survey of Roman Wroxeter’s hinterland. The
map shows the Roman city and outlying sites, also the three transects walked by
archaeologists on the ground. Wroxeter is unique among Roman towns in Britain
in not being buried under a modern city, which makes it unusually important for
settlement studies.

so accurate a fieldworker can measure and interpret such features as the Roman street
grid at Wroxeter itself with margins of error as small as 3 feet (a meter) (Figure 12.10).
The Wroxeter project is unusual in that the archaeologists working on the ground
have the ability to manipulate all available archaeological data on the screen before
they go into the field. The fieldworkers rely heavily on volunteers, who are record-
ing the Roman town’s topography by taking measurements every 33 feet (10 meters).
A magnetometer survey combined with ground-penetrating radar has revealed hitherto
unknown buildings on the edge of the town. For generations, experts on Roman Britain
had called Wroxeter a carefully planned “garden city,” with parks and open spaces. GIS
and remote sensing have revealed a less well-organized community with uncontrolled
expansion at its margins as it drew people from the surrounding countryside.
The Wroxeter data is so complete that you can even explore the dynamic,
ever-changing settlement pattern on the Web (www.archant.bham.ac.uk/brifan/
research/wh/Base.htm). Your computer leads you through three-dimensional images
296 Settlement and Landscape
of a long-vanished Roman town. Within a few years, Wroxeter’s archaeologists will be
able to answer questions about changing patterns of supply and demand. By assuming
that the town was the economic hub of the surrounding area, they will be able to show
how mass-produced pottery from remote sites flowed through the region along an
existing infrastructure of roads, tracks, and rivers accessible through the GIS database.

Population
Settlement patterns across a landscape evolve in response to three broad variables: envir-
onmental change, interactions between people, and shifts in population density. Of
these three, population is the hardest to study.
Population growth was not a major factor in human history until after the Ice Age,
which ended about 15,000 years ago. There is no question, however, that growing popu-
lation densities were a major factor in the development of agriculture in southwestern
Asia in about 10,000 b.c., and in the appearance of the first cities and civilizations about
7,000 years later. In the case of farming, much drier conditions, diminished supplies of wild
plant foods, and many more mouths to feed turned numerous hunter-gatherer groups in
the Jordan Valley and modern-day Syria into sedentary farmers within a few centuries.
Unfortunately, estimating population densities is often little more than guesswork.
Despite attempts to develop censuses from house counts and refuse accumulation,
most population estimates are at best rough approximations. For instance, one estimate
places the population of Britain in 11,000 b.c. at about 10,000 people; another places the
average population of early states in southern Iraq at about 17,000.
Nevertheless, changing population distributions are of great importance, for there
is a clear cause-and-effect relationship between population and the potential carrying
capacity and productivity of agricultural land. As populations grow, goes one popular
argument, people try to collect or produce more food, perhaps by developing highly effi-
cient ways of fishing or hunting or by turning to agriculture. Like the ancient Egyptians,
farmers may face the challenge by developing large-scale irrigation systems capable of
producing several crops a year and feeding many more people.
Population, then, is a critical variable in settlement archaeology, as William Sanders
and his colleagues showed with the rapid growth of the Aztec capital in the Basin of
Mexico. Although Sanders’s population estimates were little more than informed
guesses, he was able to show a dramatic rise over several centuries. Such general trends
are of great interest, for they enable us to monitor large-scale processes like the rise or
fall of an entire civilization.

The Archaeology of Landscapes

The word landscape defies easy definition, but everyone agrees that landscapes are
created by humans. A landscape is like a piece of sculpture which changes in response
to the artist’s hands. Perceptions of the landscape change constantly, even between fair
weather and foul. Places on the landscape are laden with meaning. Caves can be con-
duits to the underworld, places where shamans passed in trance into the supernatural
realm. Cloud-shrouded mountain peaks can be abodes of gods and mythic heroes. The
Nile was sacred to the Egyptians; the city of Teotihuacán was built on a long-term master
plan oriented toward the cardinal directions, each of which had its own gods and even
its own colors. Even today, some societies hold certain trees sacred, attribute supernat-
ural qualities to fire and water, and assign benign and evil qualities to different winds.
These are intangible qualities, which change with the generations and vanish utterly
 Settlement and Landscape 297
when a site is abandoned or a society goes into eclipse. Even then, the landscape of
memory continues to change as new people arrive, fresh settlements spread across the
landscape, or the plow replaces the digging-stick, or the automobile the horse and cart.
The Céide Fields in northwestern Ireland described at the beginning of this chapter
are a vivid example of a changing landscape. The ancient Stone Age landscape is not all
there is, for the surrounding countryside bears ample traces of much later occupation,
including abandoned farms from the era of the Irish potato famine of 1845 to 1848 that
killed tens of thousands of people. The archaeologist Seamus Caulfield was born in a
small village in the heart of this landscape and has vivid memories of the changes in his
own lifetime and in that of his parents and grandparents – his own landscape of memory.
We’ve come to think about the “archaeology of landscape” as opposed to settlement
distributions. Some mention of this new avenue of archaeological inquiry is important
at this juncture because it ties in with two major topics in Chapter 13: human inter-
actions and the archaeology of the intangible. In archaeological terms, the landscape
around Maya Copán or Stone Age Avebury in southern England has changed ever since
humans first settled in both areas. Both landscapes have changed radically within the
past century, quite apart from preceding centuries and millennia of different uses. Our
challenge is to reconstruct the landscape as its various users saw it – what is often called
their landscape of memory.
Archaeologists study landscapes in many ways: with ecologically based systems
approaches, with technology-laden methods that involve GIS and satellite data,
or, at the other extreme, in almost literary fashion, describing such phenomena as
eighteenth-century gardens or French markets (see Figure 12.11). A new generation of
settlement research is turning to landscape geography as a means of studying actual
ancient landscapes, where symbolic relationships to the environment as well as ecology
play important roles.
Many archaeologists engaged in landscape research think in terms of three dimen-
sions of organizing landscape:

1. physical characteristics and properties;

2. historical transformations over time;
3. people’s physical and symbolic relationships with their environments.

Landscape analysis is a form of historical ecology, where changing landscapes over

long time periods serve as cultural records. Landscapes are symbols of cultural stability
that preserve enduring meanings over time. As such, they are as much a cultural record
as an individual site and an artifact, and, when considered as a way in which people
organize their relationship with the social world, a potentially vital source of informa-
tion on ideology and cultural intangibles. Much of this research is informed by ethno-
graphic and historical records.
Remote sensing has a powerful role to play in research into cultural landscapes.
William Paca was one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence and a
governor of Maryland. During a five-year research project on his Wye Hall Plantation
on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, James Harmon, Mark Leone, and their colleagues
mapped the largely intact terrace system, formal garden, and work areas such as
slave yards (the house burnt down in 1870 and is not original). Paca and others
of his contemporaries deliberately manipulated the environment to create cultural
landscapes defined in part by sight lines. The research team acquired LIDAR data
on a day when the trees were leafless to maximize views of the ground, then used
data-processing algorithms to process the raw data. (For LIDAR, see Chapter 6.)
They emerged with a contour map of a massive bowl-shaped landscape with
298 Settlement and Landscape

Figure 12.11 L
 andscaping as a statement of power. William Paca, a prominent eighteenth-century
Annapolis, Maryland, colonist, designed his garden with carefully arranged per-
spectives and terraces to give visitors and passersby a sense of power and prestige.
(Kevin Fleming / Corbis)

terraces built by basketloads of soil carried by Paca’s 100 slaves (see Figure 12.12).
The images and excavation revealed three terraces and two slopes, also eight garden
beds on the upper terrace, laid out in pairs. All the beds were set at a 15-degree angle
to form diverging sight lines that focused on the distant water view. A combination
of GIS, LIDAR, and conventional survey and excavation revealed a cultural land-
scape that had been largely forgotten. The same approach is now being applied to
other great estates in Maryland.
 Settlement and Landscape 299

 LiDAR image of the core of William Paca’s 1790s plantation, called Wye Hall,
Figure 12.12 A
showing its original planned landscape probably designed by Luke O’Dio and built
by slaves. The standing house dates from about 1940, but is built on the Paca House
original foundation. The image shows excavated archaeological trenches.
(Professor Mark Leone, University of Maryland, College Park)

Sacred Landscapes: Mirrors of the Intangible

We are Homo sapiens, capable of subtlety, of passing on knowledge and ideas through
the medium of language. We have consciousness and self-awareness and are capable of
foresight. We can express ourselves and show emotions, and we have a unique capacity
for symbolic and spiritual thought. This quality allows us to define the boundaries of
existence and to conceptualize the relationship between the individual, the group, and
the cosmos – the intangible.
With spiritual beliefs and the cosmos, we enter the world of intangible human
behavior. Archaeologists study the material remains of the past, which provide
but a dim reflection of ancient spiritual beliefs. Obviously, some important sites
were of religious significance. The Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacán is one,
Stonehenge is another. Sacred places and the mythic landscapes associated with
them played a vital role in all societies. They were settings for rituals that ensured
the continuity of cultural traditions, places where the word of the gods rang out
in familiar chants passed from one generation to the next. Sacred mountains such
as the Hindu Mount Meru, the Greeks’ Olympus, or the Lakota Indians’ Black
Hills often served as cosmic axes. Maya lords built great ceremonial centers as
symbolic representations of their world of sacred mountains, caves, trees, and
lakes. To demolish a sacred place was to destroy the essence of human exist-
ence itself. In 1521, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés razed the Aztec capital
Tenochtitlán in the Valley of Mexico, knowing its temples and plazas replicated a
cherished and all-encompassing supernatural world.
300 Settlement and Landscape
In most ancient societies, the material and spiritual worlds formed a continuum, with
no boundary between them. An “external” landscape on the earth was also an “internal”
landscape of the mind, or a landscape of memory, where colors, jagged peaks, streams,
groves of trees, cardinal directions, and other phenomena had spiritual associations and
their places in local mythology. The study of ancient landscapes provides unexpected
and often rewarding insights into the ancient intangible.
Sacred places like the pyramids of Giza, Stonehenge, or Maya Tikal lay in the hearts
of much wider cultural landscapes, defined by generations of experience with super-
natural qualities. The stone circles at Avebury in southern Britain formed part of a
much larger sacred landscape defined not only by natural landmarks but also by burial
mounds, sacred avenues delineated by stone uprights, and structures where the bodies
of the dead were exposed before burial in communal tombs (see chapter opener photo
on p. 280). In recent years, teams of archaeologists have been gradually reconstructing
this long-vanished, fragmentary landscape with survey and excavation that reveal its
gradual evolution over many centuries.

Maeshowe and the Stones of Stenness

A classic example of a sacred landscape has emerged from cutting-edge research in the
Orkney Islands off northern Scotland. Two stone circles, the Stones of Stenness and
the Ring of Brodgar, also a burial mound known as Maeshowe, lie at the heart of the
landscape.
The Stones of Stenness are a towering circle of monoliths encircled by a large rock-cut
ditch with a single entrance and an outer bank. In the center lay a stone hearth. The
nearby Ring of Brodgar is much larger, and, if completed, would have had more than
sixty standing stones and two opposed entrances surrounded by a ditch 9 feet (3 meters)
deep and 148 feet (45 meters) across. Maeshowe is what is called a passage grave, where a
long entrance passage leads to a massive central chamber with three raised side rooms.
Four stone monoliths stand inside the chamber, not structural elements but apparently
of symbolic importance. This communal grave lay inside a wall and a ditch that, when
flooded, gave an impression of an island within a larger landscape. Maeshowe was a
place of the dead, separated from the living world by its ditch and bank.
In 1983, archaeologist Colin Richards began a field survey to locate Stone Age farm-
ing settlements. The survey yielded surface scatters at several locations, including one
on level ground close to Maeshowe and the Stones of Stenness. Five years of excavation
at this Barnhouse site revealed a farming village, radiocarbon dated to around 3100 to
2900 b.c. – a group of freestanding houses each about 16 feet (5 meters) across, roofed
with turf and looking somewhat like low mounds. As the village developed, it acquired
a concentric layout, with one group of dwellings surrounding an open central area and
a second group on the periphery.
One structure, on the western side of the settlement, was much larger, about 42 feet
(12.8 meters) long and 32 feet (10 meters) wide, more than twice the size of surrounding
huts. A smaller house faced it across a narrow, paved passage, the doorways facing one
another, as if there was a relationship between the two. The interior was quite unlike
that of the dwellings, comprising six large recesses formed by corner buttresses, with
two masonry piers that effectively divided the building into two symmetrical halves,
each with a central fireplace. Someone entering the building did so on the east side, so
that the western portion was the “deepest” space within it. The sophisticated masonry
used in the interior recalls that of Maeshowe. Thus, the structure may be associated
 Settlement and Landscape 301

Figure 12.13 A reconstructed hut at Skara Brae, Orkney Islands.

(Alan Majchrowicz / Alamy)

with both the living and the dead, lying as it does on the western side of the settlement,
toward sunset.
Subsequently, the inhabitants built a large square building at the western edge of the
now abandoned village, surrounding it with a raised clay platform and a stone enclos-
ure wall. It is as if the entire character of the settlement changed as the building rose
on the site of a large hearth, replaced with another one inside the new structure. At the
same time, the stones from the original hearth were lifted and moved to form a central
hearth in the middle of the Stones of Stenness.
The moving of the hearth stones highlights the importance of ritual in everyday life
at Barnhouse, with all kinds of ceremonies, private and public, marking the passage
of the seasons and people’s individual lives. This village, and others still undiscov-
ered, saw itself as part of a constantly changing landscape. During the life of the settle-
ment, the construction of Maeshowe and the two stone circles changed perceptions of
the countryside in a process that Colin Richards and his colleagues call “monumental
choreography.”
A sense of order, of ritual arrangement, pervaded village life. You see it in the early
circular houses, with their cruciform interiors dominated by a stone “dresser,” right
and left recesses, and a hearth. An example can be seen at the reconstructed nearby
village of Skara Brae (see Figure 12.13). The hearth, probably always lit, kept human
existence going with life-maintaining fire. Richards and his colleagues believe the house
architecture was a partial representation of the inhabitants’ abstract beliefs and concepts
of order.
302 Settlement and Landscape

Figure 12.14 The Stones of Stenness, Orkney Islands.

(John Braid / Thinkstock by Getty Images)

During the 400-year occupation of Barnhouse, the Stones of Stenness rose 656 feet
(200 meters) southeast of the village. Here, again, there is the same sense of order: a
central hearth, just as in the houses, two standing stones in the center (removed at
some point), and the entire monument surrounded by a wall, this time a ditch and
bank. So the general principles of spatial organization occur, even if the Stones of
Stenness fulfilled a very different ceremonial role, presumably involving rituals and
privileged knowledge, and a carefully perceived order of the world (see Figure 12.14).
Stenness and Brodgar with their massive standing uprights create an awesome reac-
tion in the visitor’s mind. They are permanent, conspicuous places set in the midst of
the landscape. There is no question that the builders created them as durable struc-
tures destined to last far beyond their lifetimes – which they have done. Their construc-
tion involved numerous people cooperating in the quarrying, hauling, and erection of
the stone uprights, as well as complex social pacts that involved both individual and
group prestige and strong ties of obligation between families, kin groups, and entire
communities.
The grassy mound of Maeshowe lies in full view a half mile (1 kilometer) southeast
of the village on slightly raised ground, constructed on the site of an earlier farming
village, perhaps signifying a relationship between the living and the dead, the past
and the present (see Figure 12.15). The passage faces the southwest, the rays of the
setting sun at the midwinter solstice illuminating the interior of the central chamber.
 Settlement and Landscape 303

Figure 12.15 Maeshowe burial mound, Orkney Islands, in the snow.

(Doug Houghton / Alamy)

Then the interior returns to darkness; the sun begins its return journey, and again the
interior is illuminated in a process of symbolic rebirth shared with the ancestors. Thus,
Maeshowe marked a fixed moment in the annual cycle of the agricultural year, the
beginning of regeneration. The passage grave mound bears a close relationship to the
nearby hill of Hoy, which dominates the landscape. Richards and his colleagues believe
Maeshowe, the residence of the ancestors, was built to resemble the earth with its rock
covered with soil, situated midway between the humanly inhabited world and the
nether regions.
Thus, from 3300 b.c. onward, Barnhouse acted as a focal point for an entire land-
scape of a passage grave, stone circles (henges), and standing stones, all erected over
a 400-year period. Village architecture and the great monuments are closely related, so
much so that the one is an extension of the other, just as the builders intended – a dra-
matic example of the continuity of human life from the living world into the realm of
the dead, the ancestors, who were as much part of the cyclical world of the seasons, of
planting and harvest, of life and death, as their successors.
The Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar lie on opposing promontories that
separate two lochs. In turn, a natural bowl of hills surrounds them, so that both monu-
ments appear to be surrounded by water, yet encircled by hills. If you stand inside them,
you have the impression of a circular landscape, where you can follow concentric rings
out from the stone circle, to the ditch (filled with water for much of the year), to the
bank, and then the surrounding water and encircling hills. Visitors to the interior of the
henges would walk across a narrow causeway, as if it were crossing water into a place
304 Settlement and Landscape
where standing stones imitated the surrounding topography of the hills overlooking the
villages and lives of the local people.
The ritual landscape formalized the social landscapes of daily life. The stone circles
and Maeshowe are the surviving elements of what were once the contexts for colorful,
elaborate ceremonies that involved adornment, ceremonial clothing, perhaps dancing
and chanting. Such rituals would have briefly transformed the qualities of the monu-
ments. But for most of the year, sheep would have grazed quietly among the stones.
This spectacular monumental landscape resulted from cosmology, a way of understand-
ing and viewing the world that came through the realities of human existence in a small
village on the shore of a freshwater lake.

SUMMARY
1. Many factors determine settlement patterns, including environment, economic
practices, and technological skills.
2. Settlement archaeology is part of the study of human interactions with, and adapta-
tions to, the natural and social environment.
3. The following are the three basic levels of human settlement: the single building,
the arrangement of such buildings in the community, and the distribution of such
communities across the landscape.
4. Both site catchment analysis and GIS play important roles in studying the relation-
ships between hierarchies of different sites located in ancient landscapes.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Why is settlement archaeology critical to our understanding of the past?
2. How do archaeologists study households and what kinds of information can you
obtain from such research?
3. What distinguishes a landscape from a settlement pattern and why?

FURTHER READING
Bruno David and Julian Thomas, eds. Handbook of Landscape Archaeology (Walnut Creek, CA: Left
Coast Press, 2008), is a broad treatment of this complex subject. Kent V. Flannery, ed., The
Early Mesoamerican Village (New York: Academic Press, 1976), is essential reading for every-
one interested in this subject, if only for the fascinating and hypothetical dialogues that com-
municate different viewpoints about the archaeology of the day. For households, Penelope M.
Allison, ed., The Archaeology of Household Activities (London: Routledge, 1999), gives some use-
ful examples. For Teotihuacán, see René Millon et al., Urbanization at Teotihuacán, Mexico, vol.
1 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973). A superb monograph on settlement archaeology is
W. T. Sanders, Jeffrey R. Parsons, and Robert S. Santley, The Basin of Mexico: Ecological Processes
in the Evolution of a Civilization (New York: Academic Press, 1979). More recent survey projects
are usually summarized in periodical literature. Ask your instructor for details. Jefferson Reid
and Stephanie Whittlesey, Grasshopper Pueblo (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1999), is an
excellent popular account of pueblo settlement archaeology.
newgenprepdf

13 The Archaeology of People

CHAPT ER OU TL I N E
Studying the Deceased: Bioarchaeology 307
Sex and Age 307
Malnutrition, Stress, and Work-Related Injuries 308
Violence 310
Strontium and People’s Lives 310
Individuals 311
Groups 314
Social Ranking 315
Ethnicity and Social Inequality 316
Gender 321
The Engendered Past 322
Wider Society: Prestate and State Societies 324
Interactions: Trade and Exchange 325
Types of Trade 325
Studying Ancient Trade: Sourcing 328
Long-Distance Trade and the Uluburun Ship 329
Interactions: Religious Beliefs 330
Studying Religion and Ideology 332
306 The Archaeology of People

An artist’s reconstruction of the Amesbury Archer, c. 2470 b.c.

(Wessex Archaeology Ltd.)

PREVIEW
In the final analysis, archaeology is the study of people and their relationships with
one another. Chapter 13 examines ways in which archaeologists study individuals and
groups, a process that relies heavily on bioarchaeology, the study of human remains.
Bioarchaeologists can tell us the sex and age of ancient people and provide informa-
tion on their illnesses and injuries. However, the study of groups involves such issues
as social ranking, ethnicity, and social inequality, using artifacts, settlement patterns, and
also human remains. The study of gender in ancient societies has assumed importance
in recent years and is also discussed here. The chapter ends with a discussion of trade
and exchange, also of religion and ideology, both of which flourish within often elaborate
social contexts.
“The murmur and hum of their voices could be heard more than a league [three
miles] away.” Conquistador Bernal Díaz marveled at the great market in the heart
 The Archaeology of People 307
of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, in 1519. The Spaniards wandered among throngs
of buyers and sellers, at least 20,000 of whom flocked to the marketplace daily. They
were impressed by the orderliness of the stalls and their cleanliness. Every kind of
merchandise had a separate quarter. Dealers in gold, silver, semiprecious stones,
feathers, and other exotics sold goods brought from every corner of the Aztec empire.
You could buy capes, chocolate, dogs, foodstuffs of every kind, even ice from high
on the slopes of the mountains. A dozen judges sat in shifts in a large hall, presiding
over the orderliness of the market. Inspectors wandered through the crowds check-
ing for price gouging or false measures. A standardized pricing system was based
on staple commodities such as cacao beans, cotton cloths, and small T-shaped pieces
of copper. Tenochtitlán’s market was the hub of a vast pre-Columbian empire held
together by force, trade, and tribute. But this panoply depended on interactions
between people.
For all the high-tech wizardry of today’s archaeology, we must never forget that
archaeologists study people, not just artifacts, food remains, and culture change. This
chapter, “The Archaeology of People,” uses artifacts, forensics, and other material
remains to look behind the facades of ancient societies at the complex interactions
between groups and individuals that are at the very heart of all human societies.

Studying the Deceased: Bioarchaeology

Individuals like the Ice Man reveal the power of bioarchaeology, the multidiscip-
linary study of ancient human remains, as a way of understanding the people of the
past and their behavior. (Genetics and DNA are described briefly in Chapter 4. Here
we focus on bone studies.) Think of it as ancient forensics; indeed forensic archae-
ology has become a useful tool for modern-day detectives, some of whom have
been trained by archaeologists, dealing with human remains. Archaeologists have
been called in to excavate mass graves in Kosovo and in Iraq, where their expert-
ise with cemeteries is extremely useful. Teams of excavators have also investigated
MIA (missing in action) crash sites in Vietnam and even investigated an Alabama
cemetery where graves had been illegally disturbed for new burials since 1858. As
an offshoot of such work, Richard Gould of Brown University has formed disaster
response teams who work to recover human remains and other evidence from such
sites as the World Trade Center and a Providence, Rhode Island, nightclub destroyed
by a catastrophic fire.
Facial reconstructions have proved a popular, if controversial, part of bioarchaeol-
ogy. By using modern medical techniques used in facial and plastic surgery, it’s possible
to establish, at least approximately, what the pharaoh Tutankhamun looked like (see
Figure 13.1) or the appearance of a savagely injured medieval soldier. However, facial
reconstructions are only a small part of the bioarchaeological story.

Sex and Age

Bones provide telltale information on the cause of death, nutrition, diseases
and chronic medical conditions including parasites, and diet and nutrition (see
Figure 13.2). While individual skeletons can yield valuable information, a sample
population from a cemetery is the biological anthropologist’s dream, for then one
can study overall health, life expectancy, infant mortality, and even differences in
diet within a contemporary population. For example, Nikola Koepke and Joerg
308 The Archaeology of People

Figure 13.1 A digital image of Tutankhamun reconstructed using facial reconstruction methods.
(Kenneth Garrett and Elizabeth Daynes / National Geographic Creative)

Baten studied 2,938 female and 6,539 male skeletons from Europe dating to the past
2,000 years. They found that females tended to vary more than males, but stature var-
ied with population density, social inequality, climate, and gender inequality. On the
other side of the world, Maya commoners were shorter than nobles, almost certainly
a result of dietary differences.

Malnutrition, Stress, and Work-Related Injuries

The Ice Man suffered through several periods of malnutrition during his lifetime, iden-
tified on his body as telltale Harris lines found at the end of limb bones. Chumash
Indian dead from southern California display not only Harris lines but other medical
conditions, among them series of irregular lines on their tooth enamel, a sign of child-
hood malnutrition. Some skeletons also have the characteristic pitting and thickening of
the eye sockets, a condition known as cribra orbitalia resulting from anemia and para-
sitic infections.
Quite apart from medical pathologies, there are occupational injuries, too, many of
them resulting from repetitive tasks. Medieval fishers in Europe display spine defor-
mations that result from years of hefting heavy nets. Many of the eighty-seven adults
from the early farming village at Abu Hureyra, Syria, displayed enlarged neck verte-
brae resulting from carrying heavy loads on their heads, as many subsistence farmers
 The Archaeology of People 309

Figure 13.2 Some categories of information that can be gleaned from human remains.

do to this day. As we will see below, many of the young and adult Abu Hureyra
women had collapsed vertebrae and arthritic big toes resulting from years of grinding
grain on their knees. The repetitive back-and-forth movement played havoc with their
spines. King Henry VIII’s flagship Mary Rose, which sank off Portsmouth, England, in
1545, carried 415 people. Over half of them were archers, armed with heavy yew-wood
longbows, each with a massive draw weight of 150 lbs (68 kilograms). Firing long-
bows was an arduous task, requiring the archer to push the bow away from his body
to release the arrow, usually with his left shoulder. Almost 20 percent of the indi-
viduals among the Mary Rose skeletons display a characteristic deformity of the left
shoulder resulting from the strain of manipulating heavy bows, a condition known
310 The Archaeology of People
as “Little League elbow,” first identified among youthful baseball players in southern
California.

Violence
Paleopathology, the study of medical conditions and injuries on people of the past,
does not often reveal specific causes of their death, except in the cases of fatal wounds
inflicted by weapons of all kinds. Violence abounds in archaeological sites right back to
Stone Age times. Some wounds result from hunting injuries, commonplace, for example,
among Neanderthal males of 50,000 years ago, whose simple spears required them to
hunt even large animals at close quarters. Egyptian hunter-gatherers of 12,000 years ago
display numerous arrow injuries, perhaps resulting from conflict over precious food
resources in an ever-more crowded world. Chumash Indian cemeteries of a.d. 1100
have yielded casualties buried with arrowheads in their corpses.
Few paleopathological studies rival the savagery revealed by the bones of the dead
from the Battle of Towton in northern England, fought in a.d. 1461, one of the few mass
graves from a major battle ever discovered. The engagement lasted ten hours and is said
to have been the bloodiest conflict ever fought on English soil, a hand-to-hand battle
with no quarter given on either side. As many as 28,000 soldiers perished; local rivers
ran red with blood; corpses were scattered over a swathe of countryside 6 miles (9.6
kilometers) long. A 1996 excavation yielded a sample of the casualties – males between
sixteen and fifty years old. Most of the skeletons from the grave had perished from sav-
age blows or cuts to the head (see Figure 13.3). One skull displayed at least eight blade
wounds resulting from close combat, death coming from a lethal blow to the back of the
head. Other crania displayed traumatic injuries made by crossbow bolts, arrowheads,
and war hammers. Most limb wounds were confined to the forearms, received when
parrying blows from assailants. The Towton skeletons provide a frightening portrait of
the fear, vengeance, hatred, and bloodlust of medieval warfare.
Cannibalism, the consumption of human flesh, horrifies us, but has been part of
human societies since Neanderthal times, perhaps even earlier. It’s very difficult to study
it dispassionately or to document more than butchery of human remains. Biological
anthropologist Tim White, an authority on early hominins, applied the same research
methods to a human bone deposit from Mancos Pueblo in the American Southwest. He
found that the human remains had been split, cut up, and the marrow extracted exactly
as it had been from animal bones in the same garbage heap. Despite White’s meticulous
analysis, we do not know if actual consumption of human flesh took place. If it did,
was it for symbolic, ritual purposes, or was it an attempt to supplement a diet of maize,
beans, and game meat during a period of persistent hunger and drought? Cannibalism
will always remain an enigma of the past, for the motives for consuming human flesh
are always complex and often profoundly secret.

Strontium and People’s Lives

Strontium enters the food chain from eroded rocks and provides geological signatures
that are preserved in tooth enamel of both animals and humans. Once the signatures are
known, then it is possible to identify the place of birth of the tooth’s owner, which may
or may not be the same location as where the person died.
Strontium has the potential to write people’s life stories, but there is a long way to go
before there is a sufficient archive of strontium signatures to allow anything more than
 The Archaeology of People 311

Figure 13.3 The brutality of medieval warfare. A Towton soldier’s skull with a fatal sword gash.
(BARC, University of Bradford, UK)

provisional insights into ancient lives. The Ban Chiang cemetery in northeast Thailand
contains ten phases of human burials grouped in three periods between 2100 b.c. and
a.d. 200. But did these people live their lives in one place? A sample of burials provided
strontium, carbon, and oxygen isotopes from second and third molars. At Ban Chiang,
there were striking differences between the men and women. The males displayed
considerable variation, while the women tended to remain constant. The researchers
believe that this pattern reflects a society that was matrilocal, where the women stayed
in one place while the men were often absent on hunting expeditions or married into
sedentary settlements inherited through the female line. Apart from group dynamics,
strontium research offers fascinating insights into individual life histories.

Individuals
The Ice Man is a rarity. Few individuals survive from the remote past except as desiccated
mummies like those from Egypt, Mongolia, and Peru or as frozen or waterlogged corpses
such as those of Tollund Man (see Figure 9.6 on p. 226) or refrigerated arctic families pre-
served in permafrost. We know, for example, from his mummy that the Egyptian pharaoh
Rameses II was 5 feet 8 inches tall (1.7 meters) and that he suffered from arthritis, dental
abscesses, and poor circulation (see Figure 13.5). Thanks to bioarchaeology and modern
medical science, we now possess remarkably accurate portraits of some ancient lives.

Discovery
The Ice Man of the Alps, C. 2400 B.C.
In September 1991, German mountaineers Helmut and Erika Simon made their way around
a narrow gully at 10,530 feet (3,210 meters) near Hauslabjoch in the Italian Alps. Erika sud-
denly spotted a brown object projecting from the ice and glacial meltwater in the bottom of
312 The Archaeology of People
the gully. At first she thought it was merely a doll, but she soon identified the skull, back,
and shoulders of a man with his face lying in water.
The first police on the scene assumed the man was a climbing victim. A unique archaeo-
logical find became corpse number 91/619 on the local coroner’s dissection table. Within
days, the authorities realized the body was very old and called in archaeologist Konrad
Spindler of the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Local archaeologists organized a dig at the
site, which was already under 2 feet (0.6 meters) of snow. They used a steam blower and
a hair dryer to recover parts of a grass cloak, leaves, tufts of grass, and wood fragments.
By the end of the excavation, they had established that the man, now nicknamed “Ötzi the
Ice Man,” had deposited his ax, bow, and backpack on a sheltered ledge. He had been in
a fight some time before.
The Innsbruck University research team used the latest archaeological and medical sci-
ence to conserve and study the forty-seven-year-old man. Within a few weeks, five AMS
radiocarbon tests dated Ötzi’s body to between 3350 and 3150 B.C. Biological anthropolo-
gists estimated his height as about 5 feet 2 inches (1.6 meters) and took DNA samples
that showed his genetic makeup to be similar to that of today’s Europeans. Ötzi’s last meal
consisted of meat, some herbs, and unleavened bread, probably consumed in the spring.
He suffered from parasites. Smoke inhaled while living in small dwellings with open hearths

Figure 13.4 A
 reconstruction of Ötzi the Ice Man wearing a grass cloak and carrying his
weapons.
(MARKA / Alamy)
 The Archaeology of People 313
had blackened his lungs as badly as those of a modern-day smoker. Ötzi had endured
prolonged malnutrition in his ninth, fifteenth, and sixteenth years. His hands and fingernails
were scarred from constant manual labor. He had groups of tattoos – mostly parallel verti-
cal lines – on his lower back, left calf, and right ankle.
On his last day alive, Ötzi wore a leather belt that held up a loincloth. Suspenders led
from the belt to a pair of fur leggings. He wore an outer coat of alternating stripes of black
and brown animal skin and an outer cape of twisted grass just like those that were still
being worn in the Alps a century ago. Ötzi’s bearskin cap fastened below his chin with a
snap. On his feet he wore bearskin and deerskin shoes filled with grass held in place by a
string “sock” (see Figure 13.4).
Ötzi was a self-sufficient man on the move. He carried a leather backpack on a wooden
frame, a flint dagger, a copper-bladed ax with a wooden handle, and a yew longbow and
skin quiver filled with fourteen arrows. His equipment included dry fungus and iron pyrite
for fire lighting and spare arrowheads.
Today, Ötzi lives in a special freezer that replicates glacial conditions. Scientists are still
puzzling over why he was so high in the mountains. A few wheat seeds lodged in his fur
garments tell us he had recently been in a farming village. Some wild seeds come from
a valley south of the Alps, as if he had climbed from the Italian side. Was he a shepherd
caught out at high altitude? Had he fled to the mountains to escape a family feud, or was he
simply hunting wild goats? Recently, computerized tomography revealed a flint arrowhead
lodged in his thorax, which had been fired from his left side, smashed his shoulder blade
and lodged close to his left lung. Ötzi had also parried a dagger attack with his hands. The
weapon severed the tendons of his left hand. He probably survived no longer than a few
hours after that. Why he was wounded by an arrow remains, of course, a complete mystery.
Fleeing from his enemies and badly weakened, he lay down on his left side, his head
on a boulder, perhaps taking shelter from rapidly deteriorating weather in the small gully.
Judging from his relaxed limbs, he passed out and froze to death a few hours later. For
5,000 years, Ötzi’s body lay in the gully, which protected his corpse as a glacier flowed
overhead. Another theory has it that his body was carried into the mountains and buried
there, only to be shifted by moving ice, then later refrozen.
Ötzi the Ice Man is the earliest European to have survived as an identifiable individual,
one of the few people of the past to come down to us so well preserved that we know
almost more about him than he knew himself – his injuries, his diseases, his parasites. This
remarkable discovery comes as something of a jolt, because in Ötzi we come face to face
with a once-living person who laughed and cried, worked and played, loved and hated,
and interacted with others.

A classic example of a life story is the so-called Amesbury archer, who was buried
in about 2470 b.c., 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) from Stonehenge in southern England (see
the chapter opener photo on p. 306). The strongly built thirty-five- to forty-five-year-old
man wore a cloak fastened with a bone pin. He lay on his left side with his legs bent and
his head facing north. He had suffered from an abscess in his jaw and had had a serious
accident a few years before his death that ripped off his left kneecap. As a result, he
walked with a straight foot, which swung out to his left. He also suffered from a bone
infection that caused him constant pain. All the organic materials like bow staves and
clothing had long vanished, but we can make intelligent guesses as to his clothing and
possessions on the basis of what survives.
Another grave lay close by, dug at the same time as the archer’s, containing the skel-
eton of a man between twenty-five and thirty years old. The two men displayed the
same unusual bone structure in the foot – a heel bone with a joint with one of the upper
tarsal bones in the foot itself. This strongly suggests that they were relatives.
Oxygen isotope analysis of the archer’s teeth provided a startling clue as to his home-
land. The oxygen isotope ratio of the water you drink depends on the source of the
314 The Archaeology of People

Figure 13.5 The mummy of Egyptian pharaoh Rameses II (1279–1212 b.c. ).

(Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy)

water, the distance from the coast, and the altitude, latitude, and local temperature of
the rainfall. Drinking water in warmer climates has more heavy isotopes than that from
colder environments. Thus, the scientist can compare the isotope ratios of ancient teeth
with those from modern drinking-water samples and find out where the people lived.
The oxygen isotope record of the Amesbury archer’s teeth showed that he had spent
his youth in a colder climate than southern Britain – in the Swiss Alps. In contrast, the
younger man in the second grave had a lighter oxygen isotope ratio in his wisdom teeth,
as if he had spent his late teens in central England or northeast Scotland. The Amesbury
archer is proof that people traveled long distances at this early time, far more than was
hitherto suspected.

Groups
The relationships between individuals, their own households, communities, and soci-
ety at large express themselves in all manner of tangible and intangible ways. There are
relationships between people and communities that are expressed by gift exchanges,
through kin ties and reciprocal obligation, and also through trade. Then there are the
issues of division of labor and of ever-changing roles of men and women from one gen-
eration to the next. Many such relationships are intangible, in the sense that they cannot
be identified readily in the archaeological record except in indirect ways.
 The Archaeology of People 315
As individuals, we all live in constant contact with other people: family members,
kin, fellow community members, and people from many different groups. Our lives are
ones of interaction and constant negotiation with others, hedged around by kin rules,
personal relationships, and social distinctions between individuals. Archaeologists
study three important phenomena that reflect such interactions: social ranking; relation-
ships between individuals, households, communities, and the wider society; and social
diversity (ethnicity).

Social Ranking
Rare and unusual artifacts, be they exotic seashells, gold necklaces, or obsidian mirrors,
have been signs of rank for thousands of years, proclaiming the status of those who own
or wear them. Generally speaking, the more complex the society, the more great wealth,
such as hoards of buried gold ornaments or fine drinking vessels, was concentrated in
a few hands. Wealth and power became synonymous: Witness the elaborate palaces
and public buildings of Mycenaean rulers in Greece or the richly decorated Sumerian
temples in Mesopotamia.
As was the case with great Maya ceremonial centers like Tikal and Palenque in
Mesoamerica, many such structures were built as important symbolic statements of
political, social, and religious power (see Figure 13.7). Copán, for example, is a sym-
bolic model of the Maya spiritual world, complete with sacred mountains, trees, and
caves. The temple of the sun god Amun at Karnak, Egypt, was a powerful statement of
divine kingship, adorned with paintings and statues of great pharaohs and of the gods.
Accompanying hieroglyphs and small details of royal costume provide constant sym-
bolic reminders of royal power and divinely given authority (see Figure 13.6).
Evidence of social ranking can sometimes be inferred from buildings and community
layout. Teotihuacán shows every sign of having been an elaborately planned city, with
special precincts for markets and craftspeople, and the houses of the leading priests and
nobles near the Avenue of the Dead, which bisected the city. In instances like this, it is
easy enough to identify the houses belonging to each class in the society, both by their
architecture and by the distinctive artifacts found in them.
Human burials are the most important source of information about prehistoric social
organization and ranking. For instance, the Egyptian pharaoh Khufu expended vast
resources on building his pyramid and mortuary temple at Giza (see Figure 2.2 on
p. 34). Thousands of laborers moved more than 2.3 million limestone blocks weighing
from 2.5 to 15 tons to build his pyramid during his twenty-three-year reign. Sometimes
the differing status of burials may indicate that a society was rigidly ranked. The royal
burials at Ur and their accompanying cemetery of commoners are one example (see
Chapter 1). Iron Age chieftains in central Europe went to their deaths surrounded by
elaborate possessions (see Figure 13.8).
Sometimes the distinctions were more subtle. At Ban Na Di in Thailand, Charles
Higham and Rachanie Thosarat excavated a cemetery dating to between 700 and
400 b . c . , where the skeletons were laid out in rows. They dug two areas, each con-
taining human remains. The men, women, and children in each area were accom-
panied by the same kinds of local pots, but those in the more northwesterly part of
the cemetery lay with stone, bronze, and shell bracelets and many more shell disc
beads than those elsewhere. Cattle figurines and complete forelimbs of what must
have been sacrificial beasts came from five of the more richly decorated interments.
Then as now, cattle must have been a symbol of wealth. One five-year-old child lay
under a crocodile-skin shroud – only the bony plates for the body survived over
316 The Archaeology of People

Figure 13.6 The pharaoh Rameses III makes offerings to the scribe god Thoth in a tomb in the
Valley of the Queens, Luxor, Egypt. Such depictions of Egyptian gods were designed
to validate the divine authority of the king.
(Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy)

the body. A nearby woman wore a large bone pendant fashioned from a crocodile
skull. Higham and Thosarat speculate that the people in the richer part of the ceme-
tery were associated with a crocodile totem group. They believe that one segment of
Ban Na Di society had greater access to exotic goods, perhaps as a result of enjoying
higher social status in the community. The distinctions in wealth are not great but are
sufficient to hint at a higher status, perhaps membership in the senior line of descent
from founding ancestors.

Ethnicity and Social Inequality

Archaeology offers unique perspectives on ethnic diversity, what is sometimes called
“the archaeology of inequality”: the ways in which people have exercised economic and
social power over others.
Elites have used many tactics to exercise power over others – everything from gen-
tle persuasion to divine kingship, precedent, economic monopolies, and naked force.
Perhaps most important of all are the ideologies of domination. The ancient Maya lords
built great ceremonial centers with towering pyramids and vast plazas that were sym-
bolic models of the Maya universe. It was here that the ruler went into a shamanis-
tic trance, communicating with the gods and ancestors in lavish public ceremonies.
Everything validated the complex relationship between the living and the dead, between
ruler and commoner, displayed in lavish, pointed metaphors that confirmed the divine
power of the supreme lords.
 The Archaeology of People 317

Figure 13.7 The central precincts at the Maya center at Tikal, Guatemala.
(ClimberJAK / Shutterstock)

Political and social power are extremely heterogeneous phenomena that are exer-
cised in many forms. From the archaeologist’s point of view, what is fascinating is using
material objects like pottery to study how people negotiated their social positions and
resisted the submergence of their own culture. Artifacts offer a unique way of exam-
ining the history of the many communities that kept no written records but expressed
their diverse feelings and cultures through the specific artifacts and commodities they
purchased and used.
The classic studies of such resistance are from the southern United States, where
the earliest Africans to reach North America brought their own notions of religion,
318 The Archaeology of People

Figure 13.8 A
 bronze couch on which the body of a forty-year-old chieftain lay, from the richly
adorned Iron Age burial at Hochdorf, Germany, dating to about 550 b.c. Made of six
riveted metal sheets, the bed is supported by bronze human figurines mounted on
wheels. The chieftain wore gold shoes, a gold neck ring, and gold bracelets as well
as brooches of the same material – in all, 1 pound (half a kilogram) of gold – wealth
acquired from control of trade with the Mediterranean world to the south. He lay in
an oak burial chamber under a large earthen mound.
(P. Frankenstein, H. Zwietasch / Landesmuseum Württemberg, Stuttgart)

ritual, and supernatural power to their new homes. “The Guinea negroes had some-
times a small inclosure for their god house,” wrote one Florida plantation owner in
1839. Historical records rarely refer to such shrines, but archaeologists have found
blue beads and other charms at many slave sites in the North American Southeast.
Black African slaves arrived in North America with cultural values and a worldview
radically different from that of their masters. Slave plantations were part of much
wider and very complex networks that linked planters to other planters, planters
to slaves, and slaves to slaves on other plantations. Despite oppressive conditions,
African Americans maintained their own beliefs and culture, which they melded over
the generations with new ideas and material innovations from their new environ-
ment. They believed that their culture, their way of living, everything from cuisine to
belief systems, was the best way.
African spiritual beliefs in all their variety were highly flexible and were often
responses to outside influences, whether political, religious, or economic. Thus, exist-
ing spiritual beliefs adapted readily to the new American environment, adopting new
artifacts or modifying existing ones over the generations. For example, archaeologists
working at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate in Virginia have recovered crystals,
pierced coins, and other ritual artifacts from Mulberry Row, where his slaves resided
(Figure 13.9).
Traditional practitioners were operating in a hostile environment, so they were care-
ful to disguise their activities. At the Levi Jordan cotton and sugar plantation in southern
Texas, archaeologists Kenneth Brown and Doreen Cooper excavated a cabin occupied
by an African American healer magician. The cabin yielded animal bones, iron spikes,
and other artifacts that were part of the paraphernalia of a traditional West African
healer. To the African American workers on the plantation, these objects had a sym-
bolic meaning that was not revealed to outsiders. It was for this reason that none of the
 The Archaeology of People 319

Figure 13.9 Reconstruction of a slave’s quarters, at Monticello, Virginia.

(age fotostock / Alamy)

healer’s tools of trade bore any telltale symbolic decoration that might reveal their true
purpose. And at the eighteenth-century New Salem plantation in New England, Gerald
Sawyer has found clusters of African American burials surrounding a Christian ceme-
tery, complete with engraved headstones and quartz fragments placed next to them, a
known African American ritual practice.
African Americans were disfranchised from white people in their own villages
and slave quarters to the point that their masters and mistresses may well have been
more like parts of their environment than key players in their social lives. In South
Carolina and Georgia, slaves even spoke a distinctive African American language.
Children growing up in this culture used material objects like earthen bowls that were
made by members of this culture and heard stories of magic and religious chants that
were important ways of establishing African American identity, of maintaining ideo-
logical power and molding values. Although many slaves may not have resisted their
inferior, white-bestowed social status on a day-to-day basis, they ignored European
American culture in favor of their own and rejected an ideology that rationalized their
enslavement.
Leland Ferguson has documented this resistance in South Carolina, where, in 1740,
blacks outnumbered whites by almost two to one, and one half of that majority was
African-born. Here, as elsewhere along the South’s Atlantic coast, African women
arrived with a knowledge of pot making that they used to fashion domestic wares
in their new homes. Their distinctive unglazed earthenware products occur in slave
320 The Archaeology of People
quarters, on plantations, and in cities. Once considered Native American pots that
had been traded to slaves, these “Colono wares” were the product of complex demo-
graphic and cultural forces that resulted from interactions between blacks and whites
and between both of them and Native Americans. Ferguson found that what he calls
the “container environment” of South Carolina consisted of wood, basketry, and
earthenware manufactures broadly similar to those of the slaves’ African homeland.
Ferguson believes that African American eating habits were much the same as those
of West Africa and radically different from those of the European Americans around
them. Colono ware is remarkably similar over a large area, made by people living in
an ethnic environment where reciprocal relationships were of vital importance and
where there were strong ties to ancestral African culture. It was, says Ferguson, an
unconscious resistance to slavery and the plantation system. The development of
southern culture, he concludes, was a long process of quasi-political negotiation. It is
exciting that we can use archaeology to look at the early stages of this complex process
of negotiation from both sides.
Another fascinating chronicle of ethnic resistance comes from an archaeological inves-
tigation of the route taken by a small group of northern Cheyenne when they broke out
of Fort Robinson, Nebraska, on January 9, 1879. They fought a running battle with the
garrison, across the White River, up some bluffs, and into open country, where it took
the military eleven days to capture them. This much is beyond controversy, but the
route that the Cheyenne took out of the river valley is disputed. According to military
accounts, the escaping party moved up an exposed sandstone ridge to reach the bluffs.
This exposed route was illogical, indeed foolhardy, for there was a full moon. Cheyenne
oral traditions insist on another route to the bluffs through a well-protected drainage
that offered excellent cover from pursuing riflemen. Archaeologists from the University
of South Dakota Archaeology Laboratory investigated the escape routes with the collab-
oration of local Cheyenne representatives. They used random shovel testing and metal
detectors to search for spent bullets in three areas – two drainages and the exposed
ridge mentioned in military accounts. The survey recovered no bullets from the exposed
ridge, but did find them in the drainages, thereby confirming the oral account of the
Cheyenne Outbreak.
This may seem like a footnote to modern history, but it is important to remember that
the Outbreak has become a classic story of the American West in white eyes, immortal-
ized by John Ford’s movie Cheyenne Autumn. This film tells the story from the victors’
perspective, and it is a form of morality tale of the Old West. Now oral tradition and
archaeology have shattered part of the myth, telling the story from the Indian perspec-
tive in circumstances where science has helped fashion a mosaic of the recent past that
is the historical truth rather than a myth.
The most compelling studies of ethnic minorities and their resistance to social dom-
ination come, at present, from the United States, from historical sites where written
records amplify the archaeological record in important ways. As so often happens,
methodology developed on historical sites will ultimately be applied to prehistoric situ-
ations. What, for example, was the lifeway of slaves and workers in ancient Egypt? We
know from excavations in workers’ quarters at the pyramids of Giza that many laborers
lived harsh lives, suffered from malnutrition, and had very short life expectancies. Such
excavations raise many questions about the relationships between the rulers and the
ruled. Archaeology, with its rich potential for studying the mundane and the trivial, the
minutest details of daily life, is an unrivaled tool for the dispassionate study of social
inequality and ethnicity.
 The Archaeology of People 321

Gender
For more than 2.5 million years, men and women have interacted, negotiated with one
another, and shared the responsibilities of life and survival. Yet archaeologists have paid
little attention to the study of gender and changing interactions between the sexes in
the past. In part, this is because of a lack of interest in the subject, but also because the
archaeological record has been seen as anonymous, and archaeologists have been more
concerned with explaining general processes of culture change than with the archae-
ology of individual people. Only recently have archaeologists turned their attention to
the complex issue of gender and gender relations, a promising avenue of new research.
Gender is not the same as sex, which refers to the biological male or female. Gender
is socially and culturally constructed. Gender roles and relations acquire meaning in
culturally and historically meaningful ways; therefore, gender is a vital part of human
social relations and a central issue in the study of ancient human societies.
The expression of gender varies and has always varied from society to society and
through time. Some archaeologists, such as Margaret Conkey and Joan Gero, write of
“engendering archaeology,” an attempt to reclaim men and women in nonsexist ways
in the past. This goes much further than merely demonstrating that pots were made by
women and stone projectile points by men or trying to identify women’s activities in
the archaeological record. The archaeology of gender deals with the ideology of gender,
with roles and gender relations – the ways in which gender intersects with all aspects of
human social life. How are roles and social relationships constructed? What contribu-
tions did men and women make to ancient societies? An engendered archaeology uses
a wide diversity of archaeological methods and approaches to find out how gender
“works” in ancient societies, to unravel its cultural meanings.
The most promising approaches use science to study male and female roles. The Abu
Hureyra farming village in Syria is one of the earliest known agricultural settlements
in the world (see Figure 12.4 on p. 287). In about 10,000 b.c., the inhabitants switched
from hunting and foraging to growing cereal crops. For hours on end, the Abu Hureyra
women would labor on their knees, grinding grain for the evening meal, as the monot-
onous scraping sound echoed through the settlement. Biological anthropologist Theya
Molleson studied the many skeletons found under the Abu Hureyra houses and soon
found out that the people were remarkably healthy, except for bone deformities caused
by arduous and repetitive tasks. Then she noticed that some adolescents had enlarged
portions on their neck vertebrae, the result of carrying heavy loads. She also identified
many knee bones with bone extensions on their articular surfaces, the result of repeated
kneeling for long periods of time. Many female skeletons also had stressed low back
vertebrae, enlarged toe joints, and gross arthritic conditions of the big toe.
Molleson was puzzled by these deformities, until one of her colleagues visited Egypt
and noticed that kneeling supplicants on the walls of ancient temples always had their
toes curled forward. The only activity at Abu Hureyra that could produce the same
effect was kneeling in front of the stone grinding querns found set into the house floors.
Intrigued, Molleson now reconstructed the grinding process. The grinder put grain on the
quern and gripped the grinding stone with both hands. He or she then knelt with the toes
bent, pushing the stone forward, arms turning inward as the stone reached the end of the
quern. At the end of the stroke, the upper body was almost parallel to the floor. Repeated
every day, such a back-and-forth movement would cause backbone damage identical to
that on the skeletons, also placing bending stress on the knee and hip joints and even-
tually causing arthritic conditions in the toes – conditions found in the Abu Hureyra
322 The Archaeology of People

Figure 13.10 An Aztec woman teaches her daughter how to weave. From the Codex Mendoza, one
of the few surviving codices recording Aztec life.

bones. Molleson is virtually certain that women and girls suffered repetitive-stress injur-
ies because they shouldered the laborious task of preparing food.

The Engendered Past

To engender the past means to focus not only on major material achievements like
metallurgy or pot making, or on ancient environments, but also on interpersonal rela-
tions and the social dynamics of everyday activity. These are the activities that take up
most of people’s daily lives – hunting, gardening, preparing meals, building houses,
and so on. But gender also impacts trade, craft specialization, state formation, religion,
and ritual – to mention only a few major human activities.
Gender research in archaeology is concerned not just with women but with people as
individuals and their contributions to society. Archaeologist Elizabeth Brumfiel has stud-
ied Aztec women, who were expert weavers. Indeed, weaving was a fundamental skill for
an Aztec noblewoman (see Figure 13.10). However, she points out that to characterize them
merely as weavers ignores the vital links between weaving, child rearing, and cooking (to
mention only a few women’s tasks) and the wider society in which the women lived. For
instance, the population of the Valley of Mexico increased tenfold during the four centuries
before the conquest, a striking testimony to the success of the Aztec household economy.
Women wove textiles and the capes that were the badges of social status in Aztec society.
Their woven products were vital to the enormous tribute system on which Aztec civiliza-
tion depended. Cotton mantles even served as a form of currency. Cloth was a primary
way of organizing the ebb and flow of goods and services that sustained the state.
Brumfiel shows that the Aztec household and the roles of women were much more
varied than those attributed to them by early Spanish observers. Furthermore, the skills
 The Archaeology of People 323
of cooking and weaving were important political tools, ways of maintaining social and
political control. Thus, she argues, the idealization of these skills in both Aztec folklore
and schooling developed because women were makers of both valuable goods and of
people. It was they who assured the continuity of Aztec kin groups. More simplistic
views of Aztec life mask the dynamic and highly adaptive role that women played in
this remarkable civilization.
Gender studies are often based on extrapolations from ethnoarchaeological and
ethnological data. The Sausa are maize and potato farmers who live in highland Peru’s
northern Mantaro Valley. Before the Inka took control in about a.d. 1460, the Sausa lived
in local population groups of several thousand people. Their conquerors, anxious to
increase maize production, dispersed them into small village settlements. Archaeologist
Christine Hastorf was interested in the changing social dynamics resulting from the
Inka conquest. How did women’s social position change as a result of the new condi-
tions? She approached this question by using two different avenues – the distribution
of food remains in excavated settlements compared with those in modern house com-
pounds, and dietary evidence obtained by stable isotope analyses of male and female
skeletons from ancient Sausa villages.
In Andean households, women are responsible for food preparation and storage.
Hastorf studied the relationship between the distribution of plant remains in dwellings
and compounds and the behavior of men and women in that household. For example,
in households with male heads, she found the most diverse plant forms in kitchen areas
and fewer crop seeds elsewhere in the compound where other activities took place. In
contrast, a household with a female head had concentrations of crop seeds not only
in the kitchen area but on the patio, as if there were different constraints acting on the
preparation and consumption of food.
Next, Hastorf plotted the distribution of crop seeds in pre-Hispanic compounds.
The pre-Inka structures date from a time when maize was less common and of great
sacred value. The inhabitants of every dwelling used and consumed a wide range of
plant foods, including maize, potatoes, and many legumes. Maize occurred mostly
in patio areas. It was here, argues Hastorf, that communal activities such as beer
making took place, beer being a commodity that was a vital part of ritual, social, and
political meetings. A later Inka-period compound yielded fewer potatoes and much
more maize. Here the processing of corn was more concentrated, with little burn-
ing of corn, as if more of it was consumed as beer. Hastorf wonders if the dense and
restricted distribution of maize in the later compound might reflect more intensified
processing of corn by women. They were now living under Inka policies that sought
a constant rise in maize production, regular taxation in the form of labor and prod-
uce, and, therefore, more restricted, intensified roles for women in support of male
activities.
Hastorf also studied the stable isotopes in bone collagen extracted from Sausa
skeletons. She found that pre-Inka diets were the same for men and women, mainly
consisting of quinoa and tubers, with some maize. These similar values suggest that
beer was shared between men and women. Then the Inka entered Sausa society. The
twenty-one skeletons (twelve males, nine females) from these centuries reveal a higher
consumption of maize, but half of the male diets were much richer in maize than those
of the women. Hastorf believes this reflects changed social conditions under Inka rule.
The women were processing much more maize into beer, which was consumed not
by everyone but by a relatively small proportion of the males in the community. The
dietary differences reflect a changed political climate in which the Sausa, once small
groups, were now incorporated into a larger political sphere, which depended on men
324 The Archaeology of People
becoming involved in far more gatherings, rituals, and obligatory tasks when beer was
consumed. The women worked harder, but their position outside the home was more
restricted under the Inka regime.
As the Hastorf example shows, gender research will be a marriage between modern
high-tech science and good old-fashioned archaeological observation. This will give us
the potential to go far beyond the material, to probe the subjective and the gender-driven,
even, as Hastorf demonstrates, the ways in which men and women adapt to changing
circumstances. This kind of meticulous research with its concerns for the changing
dynamics of ancient society offers great promise for the future.

Wider Society: Prestate and State Societies

Human society has changed dramatically since the first appearance of modern humans
in Africa more than 150,000 years ago. Much effort has gone into deciphering the com-
plexities of ancient social organization, the most successful approaches being those that
use broad evolutionary frameworks. These provide a general outline for tracing human
social organization from the first simple family structures of the earliest humans to the
highly complex state-organized societies of the early civilizations.
All theories of human prehistory are based on the premise that human societies have
changed over long periods of time and that the general trend throughout prehistory has
been toward a greater complexity of human culture and social institutions. This does
not mean, of course, that all human societies have evolved in a linear, ladder-like way,
as Victorian anthropologists once believed. Cultural change has proceeded, and still
proceeds, in many directions. If there is a general trend over time, it is toward increasing
social and political complexity.
Furthermore, this trend toward greater complexity has manifested itself in remark-
ably similar ways in terms of political and social organization. Many archaeologists take
this broad similarity into account by grouping early human societies into two broad,
arbitrary categories: prestate societies and state-organized societies.
Prestate societies are small-scale societies based on the community, band, or village.
They vary greatly in their degree of political integration and can be divided into three
groupings, which are, however, only gross generalizations.

Bands are autonomous and self-sufficient groups that usually consist of only a few
families. They are egalitarian, with leadership coming from experience and the
personal qualities of particular individuals rather than from inherited or acquired
political power.
Tribes are egalitarian-like bands, but with more social and cultural organization.
They have developed kin-based social mechanisms to accommodate their more
sedentary lifestyle, to redistribute food, and to organize some communal services.
Some more complex hunter-gatherer societies – for example, the North American
Pacific Northwest Coast groups – can be classified as tribes, although most were
associated with village farming.
Chiefdoms are societies headed by individuals with unusual ritual, political, or
entrepreneurial skills and are often hard to distinguish from tribes. Society is still
kin-based but is more hierarchical, with power concentrated in the hands of power-
ful kin leaders responsible for the redistribution of resources. Chiefdoms tend to
have higher population densities and to display signs of social ranking, reflected
in more elaborate material possessions for leading individuals. Chiefdoms vary
 The Archaeology of People 325
greatly in their elaborateness but reached a high level of sophistication in Hawaii,
Tahiti, and among the Mississippian people of the U.S. Midwest and South after
a.d. 1000.

Many researchers now question the general utility of the band–tribe–chiefdom classi-
fication, on the grounds that it is too rigid and of limited application. At a general level,
prestate societies are remarkable for their small-scale social and political organization,
although the degree of complexity can vary dramatically, from a few families to an elab-
orate chiefdom extending over an entire Pacific island.
State-organized societies (civilizations) operate on a large scale, with centralized
social and political organizations, class stratification, and intensive agriculture. They
have complex political structures, many permanent government institutions, and are
based on notions of social inequality, the assumption that privilege will reside in the
hands of a few individuals. State-organized societies are synonymous with the early
urban civilizations – those of the Sumerians, ancient Egyptians, Maya, and others – that
were governed by supreme rulers with absolute powers. These preindustrial civiliza-
tions, founded on social inequality and maintained by the labor of thousands, were the
precursors of the industrial civilizations of later history.
The absolute power of Egyptian pharaohs or Maya lords came from their perceived
supernatural powers, which were embedded in compelling, often-recited ideologies.
Pyramids, plazas, and temples provided the settings for lavish public ceremonies, where
the ruler would appear before his subjects as drums played, chants were sung, and incense
rose into the sky. Sacred places were the settings where civilization was validated. They
provide one way for archaeologists to decipher the religious beliefs of our forebears.

Interactions: Trade and Exchange

Human interactions involving trade and exchange are among the most complex and dur-
able of all relationships. Few human societies have been self-sufficient. Hunter-gatherers
like American Paleo-Indians and Late Ice Age Europeans exchanged toolmaking stone
and seashells over long distances. Once food production replaced hunting and gather-
ing, human needs were more complex. People needed access to a much wider range of
raw materials and finished artifacts, which they obtained by trading with neighbors. For
this reason, trade has been defined as the “mutually appropriative movement of goods
between hands,” to which one can also add ideas passed over long distances. Trade always
involves two elements: the goods and commodities being exchanged and the people
doing the exchanging. Any form of trading activity involves some form of social system
that provides the people-to-people relationships within which the trade flourishes.
Trade appears in the archaeological record in the form of exotic objects discovered
in sites far from their point of origin. For instance, the Indians of the Lake Superior
region obtained copper from natural outcrops near the lake. They traded the precious
metal over thousands of miles, as far away as Ohio. In California, Mesoamerica, and
southwestern Asia, one well-known trade commodity was obsidian – fine volcanic glass
widely prized for making knives, ornaments, and mirrors (see Figure 13.11).

Types of Trade
Gift giving is a common medium of exchange and trade in societies that are rela-
tively self-supporting. The exchange of gifts is designed primarily to reinforce a social
326 The Archaeology of People

Figure 13.11 Aztec obsidian mirror.

(Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy)

relationship, both with an individual and of a group as a whole. The gifts serve as
gestures that place obligations on both parties. This form of trade is common in New
Guinea and the Pacific and was widespread in Africa during the past 2,000 years and
in the ancient Americas as well. A famous example is the kula ring of Melanesia in the
southwestern Pacific. An elaborate network of gift exchanges passes shell necklaces in
one direction, arm shells in the other. They are passed as ceremonial gifts from one indi-
vidual to another, in gift partnerships that endure for decades. These gift exchanges
enjoy great prestige yet serve as a framework for the regular exchange of foodstuffs and
other more day-to-day commodities. This sporadic interaction between individuals and
communities reduced people’s self-sufficiency and eventually made them part of a lar-
ger society in which people depended on one another not only for basic commodities
but also for social purposes.
Reciprocity, the mutual exchange of goods between two individuals or groups, is at
the heart of much gift giving and barter trade. It can happen year after year at the same
place, which can be as humble as someone’s house. Such central places become the
focus of gift giving and trade. When a village becomes involved in both the production
of trade goods and their exchange with other communities, it probably will become an
even more important center, a place to which people will travel to trade.
Redistribution of trade goods from a central place throughout a culture requires
some form of organization to ensure that the redistribution is equitable. A redistributive
mechanism may be controlled by a chief, a religious leader, or some form of manage-
ment organization. The chief, whose position is perhaps reinforced by religious power,
has a serious responsibility to his community that can extend over several villages. His
lines of redistribution stretch out through people of lesser rank to the individual vil-
lager. A chief will negotiate exchanges with other chiefs, then redistribute the exotic
materials and objects he or she obtains to individual households.
Markets are both places and particular styles of administering and organiz-
ing trade that encourage people to set aside one place for trading and to have rela-
tively stable, almost fixed prices for staple commodities. No literate civilization ever
 The Archaeology of People 327

Figure 13.12 A camel caravan. The domestication of the camel in southern Arabia in about 1000
b . c. and the development of saddles for both fighting and carrying loads on their
backs revolutionized both desert travel and commerce in Southwest Asia at about
the time of Christ. Those who bred camels and controlled trade routes acquired great
political power. The famous city of Petra in present-day Jordan was one major cara-
van terminus.
(STOCKFOLIO ® / Alamy)

developed without strong central places where trading activities were regulated and
monopolies developed over both sources of materials and trade routes themselves.
The Tenochtitlán market, described at the beginning of this chapter, is an example.
Successful market trading requires predictable supplies of basic commodities and
adequate policing of trade routes. It is significant that most early Mesopotamian and
Egyptian trade was riverine, where policing was easier. When the great overland cara-
van routes opened, the political and military issues – tribute, control of trade routes,
and tolls – became paramount. The caravan of camels, donkeys, or other beasts, pre-
dating the great empires, was a form of organized trading that kept to carefully defined
routes set up and maintained by state authorities (see Figure 13.12). The travelers
moved along these set routes, looking neither left nor right, bent only on delivering
and exchanging imports and exports. Markets were also, and still are, places for gath-
ering information from people living at a considerable distance. In West Africa, Fulani
cattle herders spend much time hanging around markets, not because they are idling
away time but because they are acquiring valuable information about grazing grass
and water supplies.
328 The Archaeology of People

Figure 13.13 O
 bsidian trade in the eastern Mediterranean region. Sourcing studies reveal that
early farming communities in Cyprus, Anatolia, and the Levant obtained their
obsidian from two sources in central Anatolia. Meanwhile, villages like Jarmo in the
Zagros Mountains and Ali Kosh far to the southeast relied on sources in Armenia.
Settlements like Çatalhöyük in Anatolia were so close to obsidian sources that they
probably collected their own supplies. More than 80 percent of their stone artifacts
are made of the material. Obsidian tools are much rarer down the line, the further one
travels from the source. In the 1960s, Colin Renfrew and others used spectrographic
analysis to identify no fewer than twelve early farming villages that had obtained
obsidian from the Ciftlik area of central Turkey. This pioneering study showed that
80 percent of the chipped stone in villages within 186 miles (298 kilo­meters) of Ciftlik
was obsidian. Outside this “supply zone,” the percentages of obsidian dropped
away sharply with distance, to 5 percent in a Syrian village and 0.1 percent in the
Jordan Valley. If these calculations were correct, each village was passing about half
of its imported obsidian further down the line.

Studying Ancient Trade: Sourcing

Obtaining evidence of long-distance trade involves far more sophisticated inquiry than
merely plotting the distribution of distinctive artifacts hundreds of miles away from
their place of manufacture. Research into the sources of raw materials is sometimes
called sourcing or characterization because it involves identifying the characteristic
properties of the distinctive raw materials used to fashion, say, stone axes. We should
stress the word distinctive, for the essence of these methods is that we are able to iden-
tify the specific source with great accuracy. For example, obsidian from Lipari Island
off Sicily was traded over a wide area of the central Mediterranean. It is an obsidian
with highly specific characteristics that show it came from Lipari and nowhere else (see
Figure 13.13).
 The Archaeology of People 329
Sourcing methods include microscopic examination of thin sections of stone axes or
potsherds that use trace element analysis and other methods to source raw materials and
identify constituents in pottery clays or metal artifacts. Trace element analysis employs
a variety of techniques such as neutron activation analysis and X-ray spectrometry. All
of them produce tables of individual elements – for example, antimony, lead, tin, and
so on. Matching such tables with sources is extremely difficult and requires a careful
research strategy, usually involving statistics and several elements.
Some spectacular results have been obtained, especially with obsidian. For instance,
we now know that obsidian from the Admiralty Islands in the Bismarck Archipelago in
the southwestern Pacific was traded no less than 1,860 miles (2,976 kilometers), as far as
Vanuatu in Micronesia, and 2,200 miles (3,520 kilometers) to Borneo in the west. We also
know of no fewer than fifty obsidian sources in California alone, their stone exchanged
over long distances. The use of source data enables us to conceive of exchange on a
regional basis.
Prehistoric quarries, such as those in Greece, Mesoamerica, and Australia, are poten-
tially valuable sources of information on the exchange of exotic materials. Archaeologist
Robin Torrence studied the Aegean obsidian trade and found that the exchange was
noncommercial and noncompetitive in 5000 b.c. The prehistoric stoneworkers visited
quarries and prepared material for exchange with minimal concern for economical use
of the raw material. On the island of Melos, for example, the visitors simply quarried
what they wanted and left. There is no evidence of specialized production.

Long-Distance Trade and the Uluburun Ship

Artifact distributions and characterization techniques have helped provide a unique
portrait of prehistoric trade from a Bronze Age shipwreck at Uluburun, off southern
Turkey. The heavily laden ship was sailing westward from the eastern Mediterranean
in 1305 b.c. when it was shattered on the jagged rocks of Uluburun, near Kas. It sank
in 151 feet (46 meters) of water. Archaeologists plotted the exact position of every tim-
ber, every item of the ship’s equipment and cargo, before lifting any artifacts from the
seabed. They found that the ship was laden with 6 tons (5,455 kilograms) of copper
ingots, probably mined in Cyprus; also with tin ingots and artifacts (see Figure 13.14).
The tin may have come from southern Turkey. Canaanite jars from Palestine or Syria
held olives, glass beads, and resin from the terebinth tree, used in religious rituals. The
ship’s hold contained Baltic amber that probably reached the Mediterranean overland,
ebony-like wood from Africa, and elephant and hippopotamus ivory and ostrich egg-
shells from North Africa or Syria. Egyptian, Levantine, and Mycenaean daggers, swords,
spearheads, and woodworking tools lay aboard, as well as sets of weights, some fash-
ioned in animal forms. There were costly glass ingots, Mesopotamian cylinder seals, a
Mycenaean seal stone, even a gold cup and parts of a tortoiseshell lute. The ship carried
Egyptian scarabs, dozens of fishing weights, fishhooks, and twenty-three stone anchors,
vital when anchoring in windy coves. Even the thorny burnet shrub used to pack the
cargo was preserved.
By using find distributions from land sites and a variety of sourcing techniques,
archaeologists George Bass and Cemal Pulak have reconstructed the anonymous skip-
per’s last journey. He started his voyage on the Levant coast, sailed north up the coast,
then crossed to Cyprus and coasted along the southern Turkish shore. The ship called
at ports large and small on its way west along a well-traveled route that took advantage
of changing seasonal winds, to Crete, some Aegean islands, and perhaps to the Greek
mainland. The skipper had traversed this route many times, but on this occasion his
330 The Archaeology of People

Figure 13.14 Excavations on the Uluburun ship, southern Turkey.

(Institute of Nautical Archaeology, Texas A&M University)

luck ran out and he lost his ship, the cargo, and perhaps his life on Uluburun’s pitiless
rocks. From the archaeologist’s perspective, the Uluburun shipwreck is a godsend, for
it allows us to fill in many details of an elaborate trade network that linked the eastern
Mediterranean with Egypt, the Aegean, and Greece more than 3,300 years ago.
The study of ancient trade is a vital source of information on social organization and
the ways in which societies became more complex. Trade itself developed a great com-
plexity, in both goods traded and the interactions of people involved. Colin Renfrew has
identified no fewer than ten types of interaction between people that can result from
trading, ranging from simple contact between individuals to trading by professional
traders, such as the pochteca of the Maya and the Aztec, who sometimes acted as spies.

Interactions: Religious Beliefs

Religious beliefs also involve interactions between people and between the living and
supernatural worlds. In Chapter 12, we discussed sacred landscapes, which define the
relationships between people and the cosmos, but evidence for religious beliefs goes
back at least to the time of the Neanderthals some 70,000 years ago, when the evidence
for human burial comes to light. Some of the earliest religious objects in the world are
the ancestral figurines made at the early farming village of ‘Ain Ghazal, Jordan, before
7500 b.c. (see Figure 13.15).
Belief in an afterlife reflects a view of human existence that connects the world of the
living with the supernatural realm in a seamless continuum. For this reason, both bur-
ial rites and commemoration of ancestors have played important roles in ancient life.
For instance, hundreds of Adena and Hopewell burial mounds dot the landscape of the
Midwest, holding the graves of thousands of leaders and lesser personages, each buried
 The Archaeology of People 331

Figure 13.15 A
 haunting ancestral figurine from ‘Ain Ghazal, Jordan, dating to c. 7500 b.c. , one of
the earliest religious objects in the world.
(Archaeological Museum, Amman, Jordan. Photo by Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY)

with distinctive grave furniture, some with elaborate, highly prestigious artifacts such
as mica and copper ornaments. The building of the Hopewell mounds was carried out
step by step as the dead were deposited on an earthen platform that was later covered
with a large mound. The famed Great Serpent Mound in Ohio is a later ceremonial
earthwork whose exact religious significance still escapes us (see Figure 13.16).
Most societies’ religious beliefs were interpreted and maintained through regular
religious rituals conducted at specific times of the year, as at harvests and plantings.
These regular ceremonies were vital to the elaborate organization of newly emerging
complex societies. The predictable yearly round of religious life gave society an orderly
framework for redistributing food, disposing of surplus cattle, accumulating wealth,
and other economic functions. The long-term effects of these new, unifying religious
beliefs were startling.
Between 1150 and 850 b.c., Mesoamerican society began to undergo rapid trans-
formation. Administrative and religious authority came together in the hands of leaders
of a newly ranked society, with specialists and a hierarchy of settlements. This organ-
ization contrasted with the dispersed villages of earlier times. More elaborate public
buildings appeared as temples and monumental buildings began to reflect individual
communities’ common involvement in public works (see Figure 13.17). In Mesoamerica
and elsewhere, the ultimate sacred beliefs and rituals of a society are linked to the pro-
cesses of social and environmental change that act upon it.
332 The Archaeology of People

Figure 13.16 T
 he Great Serpent Mound, Hopewell, Adams County, Ohio, built by the Mississippian
people as a ceremonial earthwork.
(MPI / Getty Images)

Studying Religion and Ideology

In recent years, many researchers have turned to ethnohistorical and historical records
to decipher ancient religious beliefs. Only a few years after the Spanish Conquest of
Mexico, missionary Fray Bernardino de Sahagun (c. 1499–1590) laboriously recorded a
mass of information about Aztec life and civilization gleaned from Indian survivors of
the Conquest. In his great work, A General History of the Things of New Spain, he described
not only early Aztec history but also minute details of Indian religion, even Aztec phil-
osophy and poetry. Modern scholars are interpreting his writings and discovering that
Aztec religious beliefs were at least as sophisticated and complex as the Catholic beliefs
that replaced them.
David Lewis-Williams is an expert on the prehistoric rock art of southern Africa, an
art tradition painted on the walls of caves and rockshelters for thousands of years until
Europeans came in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a.d. This art depicts animals,
hunters during the chase, and scenes of camp life and religious ceremonies, as well as
complex signs and symbols. No painters survived into this century, but Lewis-Williams
dug into early oral traditions of the paintings collected by nineteenth-century investiga-
tors, who also recorded some of the San oral traditions about the paintings. His research
 The Archaeology of People 333

Figure 13.17 F
 our figures grouped deliberately to form a scene, found buried beneath a house of
about 1200 b . c . at San José Mogote, Oaxaca, Mexico.
(Courtesy of Joyce Marcus and Kent Flannery, University of Michigan)

has enabled him to evaluate some of the paintings of eland and other animals in their
ancient symbolic context. The paintings were integral to the symbolic world of the San,
a world intimately tied to the animals they hunted.
David Friedel and Linda Schele’s work on Maya cosmology is a fine example of this
type of research. They have used changes in Maya images and hieroglyphs to study the
meaning of symbols associated with political power. For example, the religious symbol-
ism of Maya society in 100 b.c. was based on the passage of Venus as morning and even-
ing star with the rising and setting of the sun. The people of any Maya community could
identify and verify their cosmos simply by observing the sky. As time went on, Maya
cosmology was expanded and elaborated. Initially, the names of rulers were not recorded
publicly. Perhaps such permanent verification on public monuments was not yet deemed
necessary. After a.d. 200, Maya rulers followed a quite different strategy. They legiti-
mized their rule through genealogies, public ceremonies, and monuments – much art
was commissioned as part of this process of legitimizing rulers, who claimed identity
with gods in the Maya cosmos. Friedel and Schele believe that the metaphor of the twin
ancestors – Venus and the sun – provided a potent image for lateral blood ties between
lineages, communities, and everyone who believed in the same myths. Because twins are
of the same womb and blood, so the Maya are all of common ancestry and blood.
This Maya research shows that we should never think of religion and ritual in iso-
lation but rather as integral to social organization, economic life, and political systems.
The ideas and beliefs, the core of all religions, are reflected in many aspects of human
334 The Archaeology of People
life, especially in art and architecture. Every society has its own model of how the world
is put together, its own ultimate beliefs. These sacred propositions are interpreted for
the faithful through a body of theology and rituals. The rituals are more or less stand-
ardized religious acts often repeated at regular times of the year: at harvests, plantings,
and other key times. Others are performed when needed: marriages, funerals, and the
like. Some societies, such as those of the ancient Egyptians and the Maya, made regular
calendars to time religious events and astronomical cycles. These regular ceremonies
performed important functions not only in integrating society but also in such activities
as redistributing food, controlling population by infanticide, and dispersing surplus
male cattle in the form of ritually accumulated wealth.
Religious experiences are predominantly emotional, often supernatural and awe
inspiring. A religion operates through sanctified attitudes, values, and messages – an
ethic that adds a sacred blessing, derived from the ultimate sacred propositions of the
society, to elicit predictable responses from the people. Such predictability, sparked by
directives from some central religious authority, ensures the orderly operation of soci-
ety. In time, as in Mesopotamia, that authority can become secular as well. The institu-
tions and individuals associated with these messages can become sanctified, for they are
associated with the sacred propositions that lie at the heart of the society’s beliefs. As
societies become more complex, so does the need for a stable framework to administer
the needs of the many increasingly specialized subgroups that make up the society as
a whole. Religious beliefs are intangible and survive only in the form of temples, ritual
paraphernalia, and art. Viewed in isolation, the study of ancient religion seems a hope-
less task – if archaeological finds are the only source of information available. But if one
views religion and ritual as integral to a society and closely tied to all other aspects of its
activities, there is some hope that we may be able to look at ritual and religious artifacts
in the context of a society as a whole.
One example comes from the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. Between 1400 and 1150
b.c., modest temples appear in local villages, built on adobe and earth platforms. Rare
conch-shell trumpets and turtle-shell drums traded from the coastal lowlands were
apparently used in public ceremonies in such buildings. Clay figurines of dancers wear-
ing costumes and masks that make them look like fantastic creatures and animals, as
well as pottery masks, also appear at the same time. So does another religious artifact,
the stingray spine imported from the Gulf of Mexico, used in personal self-mutilation
rituals of bloodletting. The Spanish described how the Aztec nobles would gash them-
selves with knives or with fish and stingray spines in religious acts of mutilation that
were penances before the gods. Thus, argued archaeologist Kent Flannery, there were
three levels of religious ceremony: personal bloodletting; dances run by kin groups,
which cut across household lines; and public rituals in ceremonial buildings, involving
a region wider than one village.
The most effective way to study such intangibles as social organization or religious
beliefs and rituals is to consider them as integral to a society, closely tied to all other
aspects of its activities. The rituals that ensured the continuity of religious belief are
reflected in architecture and art, and the presence or absence of sacred artifacts in the
archaeological record may reveal valuable information on prehistoric religion, provided
that research designs are carefully made.
In these and many other ways, archaeologists are trying to unravel the complex and
little-understood symbolic world of the ancients. The task will never be an easy one,
and it requires large data sets, excellent preservation, and sophisticated theoretical
approaches. Australian historian Inga Clendinnen, the author of a superb book on the
Aztecs, calls us “Ahabs pursuing our great white whale.” She aptly writes:
 The Archaeology of People 335
We will never catch him … it is our limitations of thought, of understandings,
of imagination we test as we quarter these strange waters. And then we think
we see a darkening in the deeper water, a sudden surge, the roll of a fluke – and
then the heart-lifting glimpse of the great white shape … there on the glimmering
horizon.
(Clendinnen, 1991: 275)

We have described many of the basic principles and methods of archaeology. In

Chapter 14, we turn to another aspect of archaeology – the management of the past for
future generations.

SUMMARY
1. Humans spend their lives interacting with one another as individuals and as groups.
This chapter explains how archaeologists study such interactions, beginning with
individuals, then groups.
2. In studying social organization, archaeologists use exotic artifacts and human buri-
als to identify social ranking by examining the differences in wealth and ornamen-
tation. They use distinctive artifact patterns, historical documents, and symbols of
political and religious power to study social ranking and ideologies of domination
as well as resistance to power.
3. Important studies of African American societies in the southern United States have
shown how many such communities maintained their beliefs and culture for many
generations.
4. In recent years, some archaeologists have analyzed gender relations in ancient soci-
eties, using artifacts, monumental architecture, and the changing status of women
as revealed through artifacts and changing food patterns.
5. Archaeologists define several broad levels of sociocultural evolution in prehistory,
which provide a general framework for tracing human organization through time.
Prestate societies include bands, tribes, and chiefdoms, small-scale societies that
vary greatly in their degree of political integration. State-organized societies, the
preindustrial civilizations, operate on a large scale, with centralized social and pol-
itical institutions and social classes.
6. Exchange systems were used by ancient societies to acquire goods and services from
outside their own site catchment areas. Much ancient trade depends on reciprocity,
the mutual exchange of goods between two individuals, and on the redistribution
of trade goods from a central place throughout a culture. Such exchange differs
from markets, which were places for administering and organizing trade found in
more complex societies.
7. Trade appears in the archaeological record in the form of such exotic objects as sea-
shells far inland or metals far from their original sources.
8. A variety of characterization, or sourcing, techniques allow archaeologists to iden-
tify the specific sources of some raw materials like copper and obsidian, thereby
allowing them to study ancient trade routes. These methods include spectrographic
and neutron activation analysis as well as artifact distributions.
9. Religious beliefs can sometimes be discerned from traditional histories and also
from art traditions and through the decipherment of early scripts, such as Maya
glyphs. Such beliefs were integral to all societies and are best studied with careful
research designs.
336 The Archaeology of People

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What does biological anthropology contribute to your understanding of the human
past? Think of specific examples.
2. What is the importance of engendered archaeology, and what can it tell us about
human diversity?
3. What information does sourcing give us about ancient trade and exchange?

FURTHER READING
The Ice Man is well described by Konrad Spindler, The Man in the Ice (London: Weidenfeld and
Nicholson, 1994), although new and obscurely published articles are updating the portrait
in Spindler’s summary. Simon Mays, The Archaeology of Human Bones (New York: Routledge,
1998), is an invaluable manual on this complex subject. Clark Spencer Larsen, Skeletons in
Our Closet (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), is a lively introduction. Social
ranking is well covered by Mike Parker Pearson, The Archaeology of Death and Burial (College
Station: Texas A&M Press, 2000). Ethnic diversity: Leland Ferguson, Uncommon Ground
(Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), is a fascinating essay on African
American archaeology that reveals some of the potential of this approach to historical
archaeology. See also Sian Jones, The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the
Past and Present (London: Routledge, 1997); also Teresa Singleton, ed. I, Too, Am American
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999), for essays on African American
archaeology.
The literature on the archaeology of gender is proliferating rapidly. Joan Gero and Margaret
Conkey, eds., Engendering Archaeology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), is still a definitive starting point.
See also: Sue Hamilton et al., eds., Archaeology and Women (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press,
2007), and Rosemary Joyce, Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives: Sex, Gender, and Archaeology (London
and New York: Thames and Hudson, 2009). E. Brumfiel and T. K. Earle, eds., Specialization,
Exchange, and Complex Societies (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987), discuss
long-distance exchange. On prehistoric religion, I attempted a summary in my From Black Land
to Fifth Sun (Reading, MA: Perseus, 1998). The best set of essays on the whole area of the intan-
gible appears under the title “What Is Cognitive Archaeology?” in the Cambridge Archaeological
Journal 3(2) (1993): 247–270.
newgenprepdf

14 Managing the Past

CHAPT ER OU TL I N E
Legislating the Past 339
What Is Protected? 341
Assessment, Mitigation, and Compliance 344
Phase 1: Identification and Preliminary Assessment 344
Phase 2: Assessing Significance 345
Phase 3: Management Plans and Mitigation 345
Management versus Research 345
Strategies of CRM Research 347
Geomorphology 348
Safety 348
Technology 349
Management Challenges 349
Issues of Quality 349
The Issue of Site Records 350
The Issue of Curation 350
The Issue of Publication and Dissemination 351
Native Americans and CRM 352
Public Archaeology 352
Archaeological Tourism 353
338 Managing the Past

The mortuary temple of Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut on the banks of the Nile, Egypt, c. 1483 b.c.
(Leonid Andronov / iStock by Getty Images)

PREVIEW
Chapter 14 moves away from the basic principles of archaeological research and looks
at the management of the archaeological record through cultural resource management
(CRM). We summarize the key U.S. federal legislation that encompasses the protection
of archaeological sites, then describe the three stages of CRM investigation that consti-
tute compliance with federal law. Next we cover issues that confront CRM, issues of
research as opposed to management, and the four basic issues surrounding effective
management of the past. Native Americans play an important role in CRM, while public
archaeology is a rapidly expanding part of the discipline, reflected in a new concern for
stakeholders in the past as well as in archaeological tourism.
Archaeology is under siege and has been for generations. The fragile and finite
archives of the past have been under accelerating threat ever since the rapid expansion
of industrial civilization in Europe and the Americas during the nineteenth century.
The problem has assumed epochal proportions since the 1960s. The pace of wholesale
destruction has accelerated as urbanization has become universal and global popula-
tions have mushroomed. Add a frenzy of road construction to ease traffic congestion,
rapid urban expansion, and the intensification of strip mining and industrial-scale deep
plowing to the equation and you have a scenario for wholesale destruction. The looting
of sites for salable antiquities further threatens the rapidly evaporating record of the
past. In many areas, the very future of the past is in question. Less than 5 percent of the
pre-1850s archaeological record of Los Angeles County remains undisturbed. At least
25 percent of the sites that existed in Arkansas in 1750 were destroyed by agricultural
 Managing the Past 339
and other land use, to say nothing of looters, between 1962 and 1972. Despite herculean
efforts to stem the tide, the destruction has continued since then.
In many parts of the world, we’re now at the point at which the management and
stewardship of finite archaeological resources is the overwhelming priority. Most
archaeologists of the future will spend their careers attempting to save the past for
future generations. So far, Archaeology has described the basic principles, methods, and
techniques of archaeological research. In this chapter we turn our attention to the man-
agement of the past and to cultural resource management and public archaeology (see
the Discovery box).

Legislating the Past

Cultural resources are the human-made and natural features associated with human
activity. They are the unique and nonrenewable sites, structures, and artifacts that
make up the material record of the human past. Cultural resource management
(CRM) is the application of management skills to preserve important parts of our
cultural heritage, both historic and prehistoric, for the benefit of the public today
and in the future. A considerable body of legislation at the federal and state level
protects antiquities on public lands. The United States is one of the few countries
that extends virtually no protection to archaeological sites found on privately held
or owned land.

Discovery
African American Burial Ground, New York City, 1991
Cultural resource management projects sometimes yield unexpected discoveries. In
1991, the federal government planned to build a thirty-four-story office building in the
heart of Lower Manhattan, New York. The responsible agency, the General Services
Administration, retained a team of archaeologists to study the cleared site. When they
examined eighteenth-century city maps of the area, the researchers found that the pro-
posed construction site was located in an area that surveyors of the day had called the
“Negro Burial Ground.” They assumed that the basements of nineteenth-century buildings
had destroyed most, if not all, of the graves in the abandoned cemetery and thus con-
cluded that it was safe to proceed with construction.
Unfortunately, much of the cemetery had been buried beneath thick layers of fill,
and many burials remained intact beneath the basements of the nineteenth-century
buildings (see Figure 14.1). Just weeks before the contractors were due to start con-
struction, dozens of undisturbed burials were discovered. Four hundred and twenty
graves, some stacked one on top of the other, were eventually recovered from one
small portion of the cemetery. The discovery provides the largest American skeletal
collection and one of the most significant eighteenth-century sites studied by archaeol-
ogists. Intense controversy erupted over the discovery, as New York’s black community
expressed outrage at the way in which the survey, excavations, and human remains
had been handled without consultation with African Americans. The site itself became
a focus of community protests and cultural inspiration. Eventually, the skeletons were
handed over to biological anthropologist Michael Blakey of Howard University for study
and eventual reburial.
Few archaeological discoveries are as controversial as the African American burial
ground, where much bitterness and political activity could have been avoided by more
thorough field research well ahead of time. Nevertheless, this celebrated find highlights
340 Managing the Past

Figure 14.1 Early excavations on the African American burial ground in New York City.
(Associated Press)

the great complexity of archaeological survey, especially in urban areas, where histor-
ical records and sites of all kinds form a tangled archive for the modern scholar. Many
of the world’s largest cities, among them Amsterdam, London, and San Francisco, have
offices specifically concerned with the identification and preservation of archaeological
resources.

Efforts to protect American antiquities go back to as long ago as the Antiquities

Act of 1906, which was aimed at controlling a lucrative trade in painted pots from
Southwestern pueblos. Since World War II, the accelerating destruction of archaeo-
logical sites throughout North America has resulted in a jigsaw pattern of legislation
that serves as a framework for cultural resource management. CRM has emerged as a
sophisticated phenomenon, its practice surrounded by an elaborate framework of laws,
regulations, and statutes not only at the federal and state levels but also at the county,
city, and Native American tribal levels.
 Managing the Past 341
CRM archaeology is now an enormous enterprise, ranging in scope from
multi-million-dollar projects to small-scale operations involving no more than a small
urban plot or a simple survey of a few acres of farmland.
Cultural resource legislation is not the only protective tool. Other laws may be invoked
to protect archaeological sites, particularly in cases where the sites are on private lands.
In some instances, private groups have also played central roles in the protection of
resources. The Archaeological Conservancy is a bright hope, a privately funded member-
ship organization formed in the early 1980s to purchase threatened archaeological sites
and manage them as permanent archaeological preserves on hundred-year management
plans. The sites this organization has purchased include the Hopewell Mound group
in Ohio; Savage Cave in Kentucky, a site with human occupation from Paleo-Indian to
Mississippian times; and San Marcos Pueblo in New Mexico, a 200-room pueblo near
Santa Fe. (You can join by writing to the Archaeological Conservancy at 5301 Central Ave
NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108, or go to www.americanarchaeology.com.)
We don’t have the space to describe the mosaic of cultural resource management
legislation in any detail, but the Laws box on pp. 342–343 lists the major laws.
All this legislation has led to a dramatic explosion in the amount of archaeological
effort, much of it contracted by government agencies, as well as by private compan-
ies undertaking development work. Whereas fifty years ago museums or universities
employed nearly all archaeologists in the United States, most now work in a variety of
federal and state departments and private companies concerned with CRM. The money
expended on the salvage and mitigation of archaeological sites has resulted in some of
the largest excavations in recent history and in some of the most innovative approaches
to remote sensing and scientific applications.

What Is Protected?
Most Americans likely assume that the nation’s historic sites and archaeological
resources are well protected and safe for archaeologists to study and future generations
to enjoy. However, the actual protection that cultural resources are afforded differs from
state to state and from site to site. The legal compliance process on a project is, at best, an
attempt to see that cultural resources threatened by the project are properly managed –
recorded, evaluated, protected, or, if necessary, salvaged.
In general, archaeological sites on government lands, including national and state
parks, forests, reservoirs, and military bases, are well protected. These areas are required
by law to have management plans in place, and an active effort is made to document
and protect their archaeological resources. Government archaeologists oversee devel-
opment and contract private archaeologists to conduct work. Some of the nation’s
best-documented and -protected archaeological sites, albeit somewhat inaccessible
to the public, are located on military reservations. A case in point is the China Lake
Naval Air Weapons Station in southern California, site of the Coso Petroglyphs National
Historic Site, which includes some of the nation’s most spectacular rock art (Figure 14.2).
The sites are open to the public only through special arrangements on a limited basis.
The largest gap in cultural resource protection in the United States is on private lands.
In many countries, antiquities are considered the property of the state regardless of where
they are found. In contrast, the law in the United States is ambiguous because the Fifth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbids the seizure of private property for public
use without just compensation. Private property is almost sacrosanct, and over the years,
342 Managing the Past

Figure 14.2 Petroglyphs of humans, probably in trance, Coso Mountains, California.

(RGB Ventures / SuperStock / Alamy)

archaeological resources on private land have come to be thought of as part of that land
and, therefore, the private property of the owner. Although many owners take the preser-
vation of archaeological resources on their land very seriously, others do not. Unrecorded
sites may be unknowingly plowed over, while others are destroyed by landowners who
regard sites as sources of income. As legal and official pressures on looters and pothunt-
ers increase, prices in the auction room and on the illegal market go up (see Figure 14.3).

Laws
Some Cultural Resource Management Legislation in the
United States, 1960 Onward
This is a summary of some of the key features of federal legislation, which built on the
Historic Sites Act of 1935. This baseline Act gave the National Park Service a broad man-
date to identify, protect, and preserve cultural properties. Numerous state, local, and Native
American tribal laws amplify and complicate this already complex legislative picture.

Reservoir Salvage Act of 1960

This Act authorized archaeologists to dig and salvage sites that were in danger of
destruction as a result of federally owned and funded dam projects.
 Managing the Past 343

Figure 14.3 A sign that speaks for itself. Archaeological sites on federal land are protected.
(Larry Johnston / Alamy)

National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (Amended in 1976 and 1980)

This Act was responsible for setting up a national framework for historic preservation,
requiring the federal government to establish a nationwide system for identifying, protect-
ing, and rehabilitating what are commonly called “historic places.” The Act called for the
establishment of the National Register of Historic Places. A “historic place” could include
prehistoric and historic archaeological sites.

National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) of 1969

NEPA laid down a comprehensive policy for government land-use planning and resource
management. NEPA ordered all federal agencies to take the lead in historic preservation
and to locate properties that might qualify for the National Register.

Executive Order 11593 (1972)

Executive Order 11593 and NEPA defined requirements that made it essential for archae-
ologists to prepare and maintain extremely comprehensive information on archaeological
resources on state, federal, and privately owned land. This information would enable them
to assess, at short notice, the potential effects of development on these resources.

Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA) of 1979

ARPA gave more stringent protection to archaeological sites over 100 years old on
federal land.
344 Managing the Past
Abandoned Shipwrecks Act of 1988
This Act extends protection to shipwrecks and defines ownership of abandoned vessels in
state and federal waters.

Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990

NAGPRA requires all museums and institutions receiving federal funds to inventory their
holdings of Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and what
are called “objects of cultural patrimony” in the collections with a view to repatriation and
reburial. NAGPRA also protects all Native American graves and other cultural objects
found within archaeological sites on federal and tribal land. It also requires anyone car-
rying out archaeological investigation on federal and tribal lands to consult with affiliated
or potentially affiliated Native Americans concerning the treatment and disposition of any
finds (see Chapter 7).

It is in the West that the most extensive damage has been done, for the stunning bas-
ketry and pottery of Southwest Native Americans have attracted collectors and deal-
ers for more than a century. One Ancestral Pueblo basket alone went for $152,000 in a
London auction room some years ago, while a Mississippian stone ax was sold in New
Orleans for $150,000. Even relatively prosaic vessels may be worth several hundred
dollars, so there is a flourishing commercial, but underground, trade, which is probably
a network of well-connected operators. Their work may not lead to fabulous profits,
but it does yield enough to keep the enterprise alive. The situation is eerily like that of
the drug trade. A crackdown in the field leads to higher prices; in the case of American
Indian artifacts, there are plenty of wealthy private collectors at home and overseas
who care nothing about ethics. Native Americans have long fought against such activ-
ities, which they regard as sacrilege, theft of their native patrimony, and common greed.
Today, archaeologists and Native Americans are developing a sometimes uneasy alli-
ance against a common enemy – the looter.

Assessment, Mitigation, and Compliance

The process of identifying, assessing, and managing archaeological resources is often
discussed in terms of three phases that reflect increasing levels of archaeological field-
work and research.

Phase 1: Identification and Preliminary Assessment

Phase 1 provides the preliminary identification and assessment of cultural resources
within a project area. An overview of cultural resources within the project area is com-
piled, ideally including environmental background, the known culture history of the
area, a review of previous research, and a description of relevant historical and ethno-
graphic information. The survey area is clearly laid out on maps, and landowners
within the study area contacted. Using surface survey and limited subsurface testing,
the researchers assess the potential presence of undisturbed archaeological deposits
and make management recommendations. If the assessment indicates that the area has
been highly disturbed by previous construction, or if no evidence of cultural materials
is found, the Phase 1 report may conclude that no further work be undertaken, and
development work begin. Alternatively the preliminary study may identify significant
resources and recommend a Phase 2 investigation.
 Managing the Past 345

Phase 2: Assessing Significance

The focus of Phase 2 research is on determining the significance of the archaeological
resources present and their potential for listing in the National Register of Historic
Places. Fieldwork may include clearly specified surface collection, limited test excava-
tions, deep trenching to identify buried deposits, and the stripping of disturbed surface
deposits to reveal buried features. The specific objective is to determine the presence of
stratigraphically intact archaeological deposits and to assess the potential significance of
the site in terms of its contribution to the understanding of an important person, event,
or culture. The completed Phase 2 report discusses the cultural resources identified with
regard to relevant CRM legislation and makes recommendations for additional research
if necessary to determine their eligibility for the National Register of Historic Places.

Phase 3: Management Plans and Mitigation

This is the final and most intensive stage of cultural resource management work. The
proposal for Phase 3 work spells out a management plan for cultural resources eligible
for listing in the National Register of Historic Places that will be affected or destroyed by
the planned development. It establishes suitable mitigation measures for the protection
of the archaeological sites that minimize the impact of development or for excavation to
salvage data from sites that will be inevitably destroyed.
Mitigation may include changing the design of a building so that it avoids arch-
aeological resources, or the total excavation of sites or portions of sites that cannot be
preserved, with the aim of recovering as much information as possible. The final report
on Phase 3 work, submitted to the appropriate government agency or contracting firm,
describes and synthesizes the data recovered, providing a record of the archaeological
resources studies.
The compliance process (often called the Section 106 process after the clause of that
number in the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966) can be complex, involving the
archaeologist in both recommending management strategies and conducting delicate
negotiations with several government agencies at once. To be effective, a management
plan has to be a constantly evolving document, maintained and changed as archae-
ologists continue to manage and monitor the area. For example, Phase 3 excavation
may reveal the presence of archaeological resources that were not identified in previous
work, and consequently a new mitigation plan providing for additional research must
be developed.
The same process involves both federal and state agencies in other management
duties as well. They have the responsibility for protecting sites against vandalism,
a major problem in some areas. The value of each individual resource must also be
assessed, either on the basis of its scientific value established within the context of a
research design or because it merits preservation in situ. Agencies must also consider
how a site can be utilized for the public good. This responsibility means interpreting it
for the public, who may either visit the location, as they do at, say, Chaco Canyon, or
learn about it through books, television programs, and popular articles.

Management versus Research

Cultural resource management for the most part involves gathering and assessing archae­
ological data from very specific areas dictated by development concerns, such as the
346 Managing the Past
site of an oil-drilling pad or the locations of pylons along a power line corridor. Often
the areas covered may be small and encompass no cultural material or only portions of
sites, but larger-scale projects can sometimes embrace entire regions or river drainages.
The very nature of CRM work means a heavy emphasis on survey and limited exca-
vation, on basically descriptive investigations aimed at satisfying compliance require-
ments. The identification and preservation of the archaeological record have sometimes
been seen as the first and only priority of CRM. This is a relatively theory-free and
descriptive approach in which management decisions about land use are based on a
catalog of sites within an area.
Many academic archaeologists thought, and some still think, of the descriptive, salvage
archaeology that characterizes CRM as entirely inconsistent with the problem-oriented
nature of research. As a result, there has been a dangerous and often unthinking ten-
dency to segment archaeology into two broad camps: academic researchers taking on
specific problems on one side, and the contract archaeologists involved with salvage,
management, and compliance on the other. This insidious distinction is, of course, a
gross simplification that fails to recognize the importance of CRM archaeology. CRM
archaeology, especially when conducted on a large scale, offers unique opportunities for
answering basic questions about the past. The challenge is to grasp these opportunities
and to exploit them to the fullest (see Figure 14.4). Any notion that academic archae-
ology is somewhat superior to CRM research at its best is arrogant nonsense. North
American archaeology is CRM.
Today, there is constant feedback between emerging archaeological theory and meth-
odology and the realities of contract work. Many CRM projects are redefining the way
North American archaeologists go about their work, in part because of sound research
designs and also because they are often funded at a far higher level than even the most
ambitious academic projects – not only for survey and excavation but for analysis and,
sometimes, for publication as well. A problem-oriented approach regards CRM as part
of contemporary archaeology with all its sophisticated theoretical apparatus for study-
ing and evaluating the past.
Some CRM projects have involved massive archaeological operations and the expend-
iture of millions of dollars in survey and excavation. The Ballona Wetlands project near
Marina del Rey in Los Angeles, the Lower Verde Valley project in Arizona, and the Black
Mesa project in the Southwest have all yielded important methodological contributions
and, sometimes, major theoretical perceptions. CRM work on historic period sites has
also involved some large-scale, meticulous excavations that have greatly enhanced our
understanding of the past.
Some of the most successful of these projects have been conducted by large pri-
vate companies that specialize in environmental impact work or by CRM archaeolo-
gists with close ties to academic institutions. For instance, researchers at the Institute of
Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of South Carolina have developed a
strong partnership with the university that allows them to carry out major CRM pro-
jects in an academic setting. With their excellent technical resources and large project
budgets, they are able to conduct detailed research and fine-grained field and laboratory
investigations that are beyond the budgetary scope of all but a few purely academic
research projects.
As a long-term project, some scholars are pulling together enormous quantities
of raw settlement data and other culture-historical information into detailed synthe-
ses of the southeastern United States. One such example is a comprehensive study
of Paleo-Indian sites in the entire region, an invaluable, if unspectacular, contribu-
tion to knowledge. Such efforts maximize the value of local CRM projects and bring
 Managing the Past 347

Figure 14.4 CRM excavation goes on year-round. Excavations at the Howorth-Nelson site in

southwestern Pennsylvania were carried on through the cold winter months under a
heated inflatable shelter.
(James M. Adovasio, Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute)

the vast amounts of data they accumulate into a meaningful summary of great
intellectual value.
CRM archaeology is the only viable way to identify and document rapidly vanish-
ing archaeological resources in North America, the very kinds of data required to fulfill
one of archaeology’s major objectives – the explanation of culture change over long
periods of time. This is not only a matter of economic realities but also of perceiving the
opportunity to make major intellectual advances in archaeology while still meeting the
requirements of individual contracts. Some CRM companies are beginning to work with
large-scale land developers to complete surveys and mitigation recommendations years
ahead of actual development of raw land. This strategy has the advantage of allowing
plenty of time to complete archaeological work far in advance of construction deadlines.

Strategies of CRM Research

With CRM the dominant force in archaeological fieldwork in North America, the prob-
lem of ensuring quality research is of major concern. For all the debate about conflicting
approaches, and, to be frank, a good deal of dubious research, CRM has brought exten-
sive methodological benefits to basic research, among them a much greater emphasis
on prehistoric settlement patterns, sampling procedures, computer applications, and,
above all, remote sensing. The major methodological contributions come in three
areas: geomorphology, safety, and technology.
348 Managing the Past

Geomorphology
CRM projects have combined geomorphological expertise with four-dimensional views
of landscapes (time being the fourth dimension) to better understand the development
of ancient landscapes and to locate and evaluate deeply buried sites. For example,
the Upper Mississippi Valley has experienced much sustained CRM work that com-
bines studies of landscape change with paleoecology and buried-site archaeology. The
result: maps of Late Ice Age and Holocene landforms for a 300-mile (480-kilometer)
stretch of the valley. This is a superb basis for accurate assessment of cultural resource
potential.
A similar approach has been used by researchers with the Cultural Resource pro-
gram at Fort Drum, New York. Initially established in 1908, today Fort Drum is home to
the Tenth Mountain Division and covers 10,000 acres (4,046 hectares) just northeast of
Watertown, New York. Military training can have serious impacts on cultural resources,
and the base encompasses a diversity of prehistoric and historic archaeological sites.
To ensure that cultural resources are not damaged, the Fort Drum Cultural Resources
program follows an integrated CRM plan, which changes as cultural resources are iden-
tified and the base’s needs evolve.
The first challenge to effective management is identifying sites before they are
impacted. Thus far, six abandoned villages, more than 360 historic-period farms and
over 200 prehistoric sites have been identified. While some of the historic sites could
be located using maps and documentary sources, many had to be identified through
archaeological survey, test excavations, and nonintrusive subsurface detection meth-
ods, such as ground-penetrating radar, electrical resistivity, and magnetometer surveys.
Drawing on geomorphological studies, archaeologists were able to trace the boundar-
ies of Glacial Lake Iroquois, which has receded over the past 10,000 years. By tracing
ancient shorelines, they were able to predict areas that were likely locations for early
settlements. Special attention is paid to areas that are likely to be impacted by base
activities. To mitigate damage to sites, a variety of options are employed. In some cases,
areas that contain or potentially contain cultural resources are placed off-limits. In other
cases, historic foundations or sites are “hardened”: covered with filter fabric and buried
with layers of sand and gravel. When this is done, sites are strong enough to withstand
even tank traffic. Another protective measure involves the revegetation of areas with
indigenous plant species to prevent erosion. In these cases, vehicle traffic and digging
may be prohibited, but low-impact pedestrian traffic is allowed. In areas of high use, the
excavation and salvage of archaeological material may be the only option. For example,
barracks construction required the partial excavation of Fort Drum prehistoric site num-
ber 1093, a Middle Woodland village.
The work at Fort Drum illustrates the far-ranging concerns and methodologies that
must be employed in the management of cultural resources. The researchers are for-
tunate in that the vast area they are concerned with is under the purview of a single
authority and governed by a uniform policy. They also benefit from excellent technical
and equipment support. Sadly, many cultural resources do not receive such treatment.

Safety
Whatever their fieldwork, archaeologists face special safety issues. CRM research-
ers have taken the lead in introducing high safety standards to the field, which has
brought archaeology more in line with guidelines in other fields such as construction,
engineering, and drilling. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
 Managing the Past 349
regulations and various local laws may be relevant to archaeological fieldwork. For
example, excavation units extending more than 4 to 5 feet (1.2 to 1.5 meters) deep
must be shored up to ensure the safety of workers. In some instances, archaeologists
have to evaluate sites that may be polluted by toxic waste, and fieldworkers have to
wear protective clothing.

Technology
CRM archaeologists lead their colleagues in applications of high-technology
remote-sensing devices, computer-based data collection, and data management sys-
tems. Because of the often-pressing need to quickly identify and excavate sites, CRM
projects often employ ground-penetrating radar, magnetometers, and resistivity sur-
veys to locate sites and features without time-consuming excavation. Problems of data
storage and the dissemination of information, faced by all archaeologists, are made
especially pressing by the volume of CRM work. CRM archaeologists have led the way
in the innovative use of computer databases and data management programs to address
these concerns. Geographic information systems (GIS) have also played a leading role in
many CRM projects, as has the technology of site protection.
To these innovations may be added a diversity of other developments that have
largely emerged within the context of CRM research. Some truly remarkable investi-
gations combine these and other innovations under often severe all-weather condi-
tions. For example, a CRM project on a Civil War-era foundry in New York State was
undertaken under heated domes, with heaters operating twenty-four hours a day.
The research combined computerized GIS remote-sensing techniques with computer
transit mapping, image analysis, and three-dimensional photogrammetry. The field
conservation and curation facility processed as many as 5,000 artifacts a week, each
being washed, X-rayed, computer inventoried, decontaminated where appropriate,
and conserved. All this activity was carried out under OSHA and EPA hazardous
materials procedures and precautions, then combined with documentary evidence
to provide a story of intelligence operations that were carried out under President
Lincoln’s direct authority.

Management Challenges
Although CRM has transformed American archaeology – largely for the better – it has
also brought its own set of problems. While these difficulties to a large extent are prob-
lems faced by all archaeologists, some are particularly challenging because of the scale
and volume of CRM work.

Issues of Quality
Some of the most pressing problems concern the quality of the archaeological research.
Although federal legislation spells out guidelines, their implementation varies in differ-
ent states and community settings. State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPOs), the state
institutions mandated by the Historic Preservation Act to oversee CRM work, are often
understaffed, and many find it difficult to keep up with oversight. The amount of activ-
ity is so great that the only long-term solution to the crisis of quality lies in the increas-
ing integration of the goals and research techniques of scientific archaeology, on the one
350 Managing the Past
hand, and the realities and demands of cultural management and contract archaeology,
on the other.
Attempts have been made at self-regulation. Organizations such as the Register of
Professional Archaeologists (www.rpanet.org) and the American Cultural Resources
Association (www.acra-crm.org) have stringent guidelines for research as well as for
the archaeologists’ responsibilities to the public, clients, and fellow archaeologists. If
adhered to, these would ensure uniformly high standards of behavior and research.
Unfortunately, the value of the guidelines is only as good as the organizations’ member-
ships, which are entirely voluntary. Rather like the Better Business Bureau, enforcement
of ethics is difficult and censure limited.

The Issue of Site Records

The recording of archaeological data is especially important, as the study of com-
munity and archaeological site distributions is integral to effective cultural resource
management. Only when sites are identified and the information is provided to devel-
opment planners can sites be protected or salvage work undertaken. The collection
and organization of these data can, however, be challenging. Information on archaeo-
logical sites within a region is often obtained from a variety of sources that may vary
tremendously in terms of detail and quality and be scattered in a diversity of different
reports, archives, and publications. For example, information on academic projects
and archaeological work by amateurs may not be located in the same repositories as
CRM reports.
Fortunately, computerized databases and electronic media such as CD-ROMs and
the Web hold great potential for the future. At the national level, there is the National
Archaeological Data Base, an online system that contains almost 15,000 records of arch-
aeological reports. Any archaeologist with a telephone line or an electronic mail sys-
tem can now access the database, which also provides comprehensive site distribution
from many states and background environmental information through the Geographic
Resources Analysis Support System (GRASS), the GIS system used by the National Park
Service. This resource is really a database of databases; it allows managers to acquire
information on everything from county-level site data to progress on reburial and repat-
riation of burials. The National Archaeological Data Base is managed by the Center for
Advanced Spatial Technology at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. This powerful
resource is an invaluable tool for North American archaeologists of all specialties and is
mirrored by others being developed in other countries, notably Denmark. There are also
state and local databases of great value.

The Issue of Curation

Curation is the management, storage, and conservation of artifacts and other data
recovered in the course of archaeological activities. Once artifacts from a site have been
excavated and analyzed, what happens to them? Archaeological surface collections and
excavations can easily amass hundreds of thousands of artifacts, many of which require
conservation if they are to be preserved. While in the past artifacts were sometimes
discarded after analysis, keeping the collections for future study or additional analysis
is clearly desirable: Material from previous studies may be reexamined as part of new
projects, and new methods of analysis may yield information undreamed of by the ori-
ginal excavators.
 Managing the Past 351
Many archaeological organizations and institutions have established guidelines for
the curation of materials. The National Park Service, for example, has issued regulations
for the curation of federal collections, as required under amendments to existing legisla-
tion. Unfortunately, curation is expensive, and the costs of providing permanent conser-
vation and storage are prohibitive. Many museums and other designated repositories
are grappling with seemingly insurmountable mountains of archaeological finds that
pour in from CRM projects. Aside from the space they occupy, the finds must be labeled,
cataloged, and placed in plastic bags or boxes that will neither disintegrate nor damage
poorly preserved materials. The conservation – cleaning, stabilizing, and preserving – of
deteriorating artifacts is a huge problem with some artifacts such as ancient baskets or
metal objects that will disintegrate unless properly treated.
Curation is an easily surmountable problem – given time and resources. Archaeologists
and museum technicians know what needs to be done, but realization is another issue.
Efforts to inventory and curate collections have led to improved guidelines and new
facilities. However, there is simply not enough space to house many collections, and
there are not enough funds to pay the real costs of curation. Consequently, curation will
likely be an issue of continuing concern.

The Issue of Publication and Dissemination

Proliferating contract archaeology and CRM work have caused an explosion not only
of raw data but also of publications and reports on completed projects. The essence of
publishing archaeological data is, of course, to make them available to as wide an audi-
ence of archaeologists as can make use of them. This distribution is achieved through
books, national and international journals, and regional periodicals such as the Plains
Anthropologist or the New Hampshire Archeologist. Many of these are widely distributed,
peer-reviewed publications where the submitted contributions are read, evaluated, and
edited prior to publication. Ideally, this type of process would be used for all CRM
reports and the results of important projects published, but this is clearly impracticable.
Reports on many smaller projects are often purely descriptive and incorporate lim-
ited synthesis of data outside of the narrow scope of the project. Although some such
reports are potentially useful, many more are sterile, rote descriptions that add little to
our understanding of the past and are solely designed to meet CRM legislation. Many
of them are literally archaeology by formula, as if the investigators are filling in a form.
Even reports on important studies do not receive the degree of external editorial peer
review found in academic journals. This is one reason that archaeologists such as Ian
Hodder have insisted on the vital importance of a marriage between theory and excava-
tion that is not merely a sterile recording process.
Another problem lies with the availability of CRM reports. Even many excellent CRM
reports are either restricted-circulation documents deeply buried in the files of govern-
ment agencies or private companies or, at best, photocopied publications that have a
severely limited circulation – so-called “gray literature.” One authority estimated that
there were about 200,000 gray literature reports in existence in the early 1990s, with an
additional 10,000 to 20,000 reports accruing annually. The number has proliferated since
then. Sometimes within months they are forgotten, even destroyed, and the vital data in
them are as good as lost to science. The problem of failure to publish CRM data in more
widely accessible forums is enormous. Ironically, now that awareness about destruc-
tion of the archaeological record is greater than ever, the results of much of this anxiety
are being buried, almost as effectively as if they had been destroyed, in inaccessible
352 Managing the Past
publications. The advent of the World Wide Web has helped ease the situation some-
what, but there are issues of permanence to be considered with websites. The archaeo-
logical record is finite, which means that permanent records of its excavation must be just
that. The issue of publication and dissemination remains a critical one for the archae-
ology of the future.

Native Americans and CRM

Most archaeological research in the Americas has involved the excavation of Native
American sites, though the majority of the researchers have been of non-Native
American ancestry. Generations of archaeologists have assumed that the knowledge
obtained from their research is of benefit to all, including indigenous peoples. CRM
concerns about the protection and management of archaeological sites would also seem
to place Native Americans and archaeologists on the same side. Despite these presumed
common interests, Native American views about what sites should be preserved, how
archaeological research should be conducted, and the ways in which archaeological
remains should be treated are often dramatically different from those of archaeologists.
NAGPRA, the reburial and repatriation legislation passed in 1990, still raises occasional
violent controversies that often end up in the courts, notably the case of Kennewick Man
(see Chapter 7).
Some Native American groups such as the Hopi of the Southwest have founded
their own cultural preservation offices. The Hopi office preserves “spiritual and cultural
essence of the Hopi, encompassing … archaeology, ethnology, recovery of stolen sacred
artifacts, farming, and the preservation of the Hopi language” (Ferguson et al., 1995: 13).
Intensive consultation with community representatives helps overcome suspicions of
archaeologists and their work.
The Hopi definition of a site worth preserving is far more wide-reaching than found
in federal and state legislation. In legal terms, they, and other Native American groups,
define every ancestral archaeological site as a traditional cultural property to be pro-
tected and left alone. The same term, traditional cultural property, applies to shrines,
sacred sites, springs, quarries, and prehistoric landforms with place names commem-
orating prehistoric or historic events – some of which bear no visible traces of human
activity. Thus, archaeological sites play a central role in the transmission and retention of
Hopi culture. Agreement between archaeological and traditional data is often explained
in the context of Hopi ritual knowledge. For instance, Hopi prophecies of a time when
even the ash left by the ancestors will be used to prove their claims have been connected
to the flotation methods used to dissect ancient hearths.
Major controversies surround ritual sites and artifacts, and also burials. While we
archaeologists see such items as important clues to past religious beliefs, social organ-
ization, and health, many Native groups view our excavations as sacrilegious and
disrespectful of their cultural heritage. In response, ethics statements by professional
organizations now include statements concerning the rights of indigenous peoples and
the need to consider Native American concerns in archaeological research.

Public Archaeology
A great deal of the effectiveness in protecting archaeological sites depends on public
attitudes toward the past. As archaeology itself has become ever-more specialized and
 Managing the Past 353
CRM projects practically universal, so the danger of the study of the past becoming
divorced from its public constituency has increased. Both archaeologists and others
have asked whether the public is benefiting in practical ways from the enormous sums
spent on CRM when many people perceive it as a luxury. In response, public archae-
ology, a form of archaeology open and accessible to the public through television,
state-sponsored “archaeology weeks,” special museum displays and activities, and the
Internet, as well as popular publications, has become a growing part of today’s archae-
ology. Public archaeology encompasses a myriad of activities: museum workshops
for children run by archaeological societies and museums, the publication of leaflets
and Web pages summarizing new work, and many superb public outreach programs
run by cities. In areas such as historic Alexandria, Virginia, and Annapolis, Maryland,
archaeologists have worked closely with historians and the local communities to pro-
vide walking tours, lectures, and other educational programs that share archaeological
discoveries and management concerns with visitors.

Archaeological Tourism
Public archaeology puts archaeologists in touch with a wide range of stakeholders in
the past, from scholars to rangers, curio sellers, science journalists, local farmers, and
home owners – this apart from government agencies. These stakeholders have a wide
variety of interests in the past – financial, legal, and emotional. A great deal of public
archaeology is concerned with the interface between the archaeologist and these diverse
stockholders. And much of it revolves around archaeological tourism.
Today, cultural tourism, which includes archaeology, is one of the fastest-growing
segments of the travel business. Today, thanks to the jumbo jet and the cruise ship, the
past is under siege by visitors. Today, more people visit the pyramids of Giza in a month
than visited them in years even a century ago. The scale of visitor counts has exploded.
Persepolis in Iran was the seat of the Achaemenid kings, among them Darius I (521–486
b.c.), an architectural masterpiece famous for its columned buildings high on a terrace
and a stairway adorned with friezes of subject peoples bringing tribute (see Figure 14.5).
In 1914, British Colonel P. M. Sykes scaled the stairway on his sixteen-hand horse and
was overwhelmed by the view from the top. He had the place to himself. Today, you
arrive in an air-conditioned bus and spend a tightly scheduled two hours in a fenced
and controlled archaeological environment. The quality of the experience is completely
different.
What was once an adventure enjoyed by a few has become mass-market tourism.
Today, even hitherto relatively inaccessible sites like the Khmer palaces and temples
at Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat in Cambodia are on the international tourist circuit
(see Figure 4.6). One forecast projects that 4.3 million tourists will visit Angkor Wat by
2020, a quantum jump over today’s figure of some 250,000. The economic impact on
the nearby town of Siam Reap has already been significant. Luxury hotels are mush-
rooming; shanty shacks line the road to the ruins; the infrastructure is under stress.
Unfortunately, the huge investment required to make the area a true global tourist des-
tination is beyond Cambodia’s capacity. But the long-term impact of archaeology here
and at other sites, such as, for example, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in the Pacific with its
giant statues, is potentially enormous.
We archaeologists face an appalling dilemma. On the one hand, it’s wonderful that
millions of people are being exposed to the major sites of antiquity. On the other, the
sites themselves are slowly destroyed by visitor traffic, to the point that many of them
are becoming less accessible to the public. You can no longer walk among the stones at
354 Managing the Past

Figure 14.5 T
 he palace and stairway of the Apadana at Persepolis, Iran, the latter climbed on
horseback by Colonel Sykes in 1914.
(PRISMA ARCHIVO / Alamy)

Stonehenge except with a special permit. The 15,000-year-old paintings at Lascaux in

France are inaccessible. Visitors descend into a superb, accurate replica, which for most
people is as good as the original. As visitor counts increase, so people are being kept
at a distance. You can no longer walk among the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at
Sounion on Greece, a place famous for its spectacular sunsets, when the columns glow
with a deep rosy hue from the setting sun. What will the future hold? Will the world’s
most spectacular archaeological sites be off-limits to everyone except professionals?
Such a solution is unthinkable, but there seem to be few other affordable options, and
visiting a replica of, say, Stonehenge would hardly be a satisfying experience (see
Figure 15.1).
Archaeology has become a major moneymaker on the international tourist scene, but
few countries can afford to spend the money to protect major sites from overcrowding.
Nor are prospective tourists going to be happy if they are diverted to less-well-known,
not-so-spectacular locations. So the siege may end in destruction.
If this is allowed to happen, the loss to humanity will be incalculable, both in mater-
ial and emotional terms. What will the world be like if our descendants never have
the chance to walk through Olympia’s temples or Tikal’s soaring pyramids? We would
lose our past, the collective and magnificent cultural legacy of humankind – and that is
unthinkable (Figure 14.6). Just as important, we would never have the chance to com-
municate with our forebears in emotional terms, through a timeless sunset at Sounion
or the chorus of a Greek tragedy whispered in the theater at Epidauros. Such moments
are rare in our crowded world of package tours, but they can be found. And if we lose
 Managing the Past 355

Figure 14.6 Archaeologists uncovering a medieval rest stop in the middle of a village at Peissen,
Germany. They uncovered wagon tracks, a cobbled square, and several shops.
Earthmoving machinery played an important role in clearing the topsoil.
(dpa picture alliance / Alamy)

these opportunities, we will lose one of the priceless threads that connect us to the past
that helped make us what we are. For we are, in the final analysis, all human beings.

SUMMARY
1. Cultural resource management (CRM) involves the development of overall strat-
egies for conservation priorities and management of a finite resource, the archaeo-
logical record.
2. Federal legislation, in combination with many state, local, and tribal laws, provides
the legal means of protecting the country’s archaeological heritage.
3. In the United States, federal legislation, notably the National Historic Preservation
Act of 1966, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, and the Archaeological
Resources Protection Act of 1979, laid down regulations for land use and resource
policies and also defined archaeological resources as any artifact more than a
century old.
4. Some of the best-protected archaeological sites in the United States are on govern-
ment lands, where management plans require the identification and protection
of archaeological resources. The biggest gaps in the protection of archaeological
resources in the United States are on private lands.
5. The primary concern of CRM archaeology has been the identification, descrip-
tion, and protection of archaeological resources. Larger-scale projects often provide
opportunities for major archaeological excavations and surveys that have import-
ant bearing on the development of archaeological method and theory.
356 Managing the Past
6. CRM is having an increasingly important impact on the future direction of American
archaeology on account of both its large budgets and its unique opportunities for
large-scale field and laboratory research.
7. The sheer volume of CRM research has led to problems. In some cases inadequate
oversight has allowed inadequate archaeological research to be accepted. The
recording of sites, the curation and storage of artifacts, and the publication and dis-
semination of important discoveries are also issues that need to be addressed.
8. Native American groups have demanded that many Indian skeletons in public
and private collections be returned to them, a movement that culminated in the
passing of the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990.
Archaeologists are now working more closely with Native American communities
when excavating sites where burials are likely to be found.
9. One of the most important benefits of CRM has been the increasing input from the
public into archaeological research. To inform the public about archaeology, many
archaeologists now talk of public archaeology, a form of archaeology open and
accessible to the public through television and other means.
10. Archaeological tourism poses serious problems for archaeology, owing to over-
crowding and damage done to major sites by visitors.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What distinguishes cultural resource management from academic archaeology?
Give three reasons why it is important in contemporary society.
2. What is the compliance process, and what does it require archaeologists to do?
3. What are the problems facing archaeological tourism. Are there ways of solving them?

FURTHER READING
Cultural resource management is a complex subject that draws on many disciplines and is remark-
able for the complexity of its jargon. A widely used basic textbook is Thomas W. Neumann and
Robert M. Sanford, Cultural Resource Archaeology (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2001).
Thomas F. King, Doing Archaeology: A Cultural Resource Management Perspective (Walnut Creek,
CA: Left Coast Press, 2005), is a very good basic manual. Stephanie M. Whittlesey et al., eds.,
Vanishing River: Landscapes and Lives of the Lower Verde Valley (Tucson, AZ: SRI Press, 1998), is
an exemplary synthesis based on large-scale CRM research. See also Thomas F. King, Cultural
Resource Laws and Practice: An Introductory Guide (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1998),
and the same author’s Places That Count: Traditional Cultural Properties in Cultural Resource
Management (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2000). King’s Federal Palling and Historic
Places: The Section 106 Process, 2001 Updated Printing (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2001),
is widely consulted. We strongly advise you to consult a CRM archaeologist before going fur-
ther into the technical literature. Technical discussions of public archaeology exist largely in
edited volumes, most of which are case studies, and, again, a specialist guide is advisable.
Cornelius Holtorf’s Archaeology Is a Brand (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2007) is a pro-
vocative take on the subject that everyone should read and digest.
newgenprepdf

15 So You Want to Become an

Archaeologist?

CHAPT ER OU TL I N E
Archaeology as a Profession 358
Deciding to Become an Archaeologist 359
Gaining Fieldwork Experience 360
Career Opportunities 361
Academic Qualifications and Graduate School 362
Thoughts on Not Becoming a Professional Archaeologist 363
Our Responsibilities to the Past 365
A Simple Code of Archaeological Ethics for All 366

Tourists in front of the Treasury at Petra, Jordan.

(Image Source / Alamy)
358 So You Want to Become an Archaeologist?

PREVIEW
So you’re thinking about archaeology as a career? Chapter 15 discusses some of the car-
eer opportunities, training, and personal qualities needed to become an archaeologist.
We also examine some of the ways you can contribute without becoming one and end
with a summary of the basic ethics of archaeology for everyone.
Brian became an archaeologist by accident, having entered Cambridge University in
England without any idea of potential careers. He was admitted on condition he study
anything except Greek and Latin, for which he had no aptitude whatsoever! So he made
a list of potential subjects and chose archaeology and anthropology on a whim, with
no intention of making it a career. His first lecturer was an archaeologist named Miles
Burkitt, a specialist in the Stone Age, who was famous for his classroom stories. He
had studied Late Ice Age rock art before 1910 under a legendary French archaeologist
named Henri Breuil, the first scholar to copy the art systematically – and had the stor-
ies to match the experience. Burkitt’s enthusiastic reminiscences triggered his interest
in the past. By chance, while still an undergraduate, he met another famous archae-
ologist, the African prehistorian Desmond Clark, and ended up working in a museum
in central Africa after he graduated. He has been an archaeologist ever since, a career
choice he has never regretted. Meanwhile, Nadia always wanted to be an archaeologist
and followed a similar academic route to BF (Cambridge University, Ph.D., fieldwork
‘just across’ the water from BF). But she very much wanted to specialize as a writer, so
as soon as she finished her studies, she moved into archaeological journalism and aca-
demic editing. Although she still does her own research and fieldwork, most of her time
is spent talking to other people, and reading their specialist reports, to tell their stories
to wider readerships. To her, this is an ideal job. So, whatever your interests, there will
be a way of fulfilling them within archaeology – if this is the career you choose, of which
more later.

Archaeology as a Profession
We gave up saying we were archaeologists at parties after learning the hard way! Say
you are an archaeologist and immediately your questioner brightens up. “How excit-
ing! What a fascinating job,” your new acquaintance almost invariably says. They think
you are some kind of Indiana Jones or Lara Croft, perpetually traveling to remote lands
in search of some archaeological Holy Grail. When you tell them you study stone tools
and recently spent three months searching for fossil rodents (which is usually the truth),
their eyes glaze over and they often do not believe you. There’s another scenario, too,
where the questioner’s eyes light up when they learn of your occupation and he or she
asks you, confidentially: “Is it true that the Egyptian Sphinx is 12,000 years old?” Or,
“What about the Lost Continent of Atlantis? Isn’t it in the Bahamas?” Or, most common
of all: “What’s the latest on the Dead Sea Scrolls?” We must confess we are cowards,
and usually say we are historians, which, in a sense, we are. Our interlocutors soon lose
interest.
Archaeology still has an aura of romance and spectacular discovery about it, which
probably accounts for why many of you took the course that assigned this book in the
first place. You learn pretty fast that modern-day archaeology, while often fascinating
and sometimes conducted in remote lands, is a highly technical discipline in which
spectacular discoveries are few and far between. An Indiana Jones type of personality is
 So You Want to Become an Archaeologist? 359
certainly not a qualification for archaeology; indeed it has never been. Today’s archae-
ologist is about as far from Professor Jones as you can get and probably works a long
way from the halls of academe.
What, then, are the qualities that make a good archaeologist in these days of highly
specialized research and wide diversity of career options? Qualities of character are as
important as academic qualifications – which we discuss subsequently – for you will
never become rich as an archaeologist. This is a profession that has its own unique
rewards. Money is not one of them.
Anyone wanting to become an archaeologist needs far more than academic creden-
tials. Here are some essentials:

• Enthusiasm, indeed a passion for archaeology and the past, is the baseline for any-
one who enters this field. The best archaeologists are those with the kind of fire in
their bellies that enables them to raise money, overcome major practical obstacles,
and carry out their work.
• Infinite patience to carry out fieldwork and other research that can involve
slow-moving, repetitive tasks and dealing with sometimes difficult people.
• A mind that thrives on detail, since a great deal of archaeology is minutiae – small
attributes of stone tools and potsherds, analyzing computerized data, or studying
tiny details of the past for weeks on end.
• Adaptability, an ability to put up with long journeys, sometimes uncomfortable
fieldwork, and often primitive living conditions. You need to be fit enough to walk
long distances and to thrive on improvisation under difficult conditions. Imagine,
for example, filing Land Rover wheel bearings out of nails when you are several
hundred miles from a service station so you can get home. I know archaeologists
who have done that. They had to.
• Good organizational skills, since a great deal of archaeology is logistics and organiza-
tion – of field crews, site archives, even camp kitchens. A good mind for organiza-
tion is a great asset.
• Cultural sensitivity and good people skills are essential. Many of archaeology’s most
successful practitioners invest enormous amounts of time in cultivating people and
communicating with Native Americans and other cultural groups. This is one rea-
son why a background in anthropology is so important to an archaeologist.
• A commitment to ethical archaeology is also necessary. Do not become an archaeolo-
gist unless you are prepared to adhere to the ethical standards demanded of such
professionals, some of which are spelled out in this book.
• A sense of humor may seem self-evident, but it is vital, for many archaeologists take
themselves far too seriously. Have you ever spent a week writing a paper, then had
your computer implode before you have backed up your text? Moments like that
beset all field research. That’s why archaeologists need a sense of humor, because
sometimes everything that can go wrong goes wrong – all at once.

The most important considerations are commitment and enthusiasm, which will
carry you through almost anything.

Deciding to Become an Archaeologist

BF became an archaeologist almost by chance, for the occasional fieldwork experiences
he had as an undergraduate were interesting and left him wanting more. You can ease
360 So You Want to Become an Archaeologist?
your way into the field up to the point when you apply to graduate school, and have a
great time doing so.
Almost everyone one meets who is contemplating a career in archaeology either
encountered the subject in high school or became interested as a result of taking an
introductory course at college or university. What, then, should you do next once your
appetite for the past is whetted?
First, take more courses in archaeology at the upper-division level from as broad
a cross-section of instructors as possible. Begin with an advanced method and theory
course (if that does not turn you off, then you know you are on to something, for such
courses are not remarkable for their excitement). Then take a selection of area courses,
so you can find out which general areas of specialty interest you and which do not.
Remember, if you apply to graduate school, you will need some specific interest as the
potential focus of your degree.
Second, give yourself as thorough and as broad an education in general biological
and cultural anthropology as possible, both to focus your interests and to see if living
people interest you more than dead ones.
Third, take as many courses as you can in related disciplines, so that you emerge
with strongly developed multidisciplinary interests. The most important and fascin-
ating problems in archaeology – for example, the origins of agriculture – can only be
approached from a multidisciplinary perspective. Much CRM archaeology is strongly
multidisciplinary.
Last, gain significant field and laboratory experience while still an undergraduate.
Such experience looks good on graduate applications, especially if it is broadly based.
Even more important, it allows you to experience the challenges, discomforts, and real-
ities of field and laboratory work before they become your job (and you should think of
graduate school as a job). Most people’s initial field experience comes on a CRM project.
Most of these are far from glamorous and reflect the reality of most archaeological exca-
vation and survey.
If you take the trouble to acquire a broad-based experience of archaeology in your
undergraduate years, you will be well equipped for graduate education and its path-
ways to a professional career. Do not consider applying to a graduate program unless
you have well-above-average grades, a specific interest that coincides with that of the
department you are applying to, and people to write letters of recommendation for you
who really know you and your archaeological potential well.

Gaining Fieldwork Experience

“How do I go on a dig?” As an editor of an archaeology magazine, ND gets asked this
question all the time, while this was a staple question for BF while he taught intro-
ductory archaeology. The good news is that there are more opportunities to go in the
field as an undergraduate than ever before, provided you are prepared to make the
effort to find them. Begin by taking your department’s field course, if it offers one;
then look further afield, using personal contacts and departmental bulletin boards
as a start. The World Wide Web is a useful source of information on such opportun-
ities (just search for ‘archaeological digs’ and all sorts of resources will come up), as
is your department bulletin board, which advertises fieldwork opportunities. You
can attend a university field school. The most popular and rigorous field schools are
in heavy demand and are filled by competitive application, sometimes by gradu-
ate students. General field schools are worthwhile because they combine excavation,
laboratory analysis, and academic instruction into one intensive experience. And
 So You Want to Become an Archaeologist? 361
the camaraderie among participants in such digs can be memorable. Many students
receive their first fieldwork experience by working as laborers on local CRM projects.
Most of them begin as volunteers and are later paid for their work. It is worth check-
ing with any private-sector CRM firms in your area, or consult your instructor, who
may have contacts.

Career Opportunities
This is not a good time to become an academic archaeologist, for jobs are rare and the
competition intense. But it is certainly an excellent moment to consider a career in gov-
ernment or the private sector, both of which effectively administer or carry out most
archaeology in North America.

Academic Archaeology
This field is shrinking. A generation ago, almost all archaeologists were faculty mem-
bers at academic institutions or worked in museums or research institutions. Purely
academic archaeology still dominates both undergraduate and graduate training, and
there are many people who enter graduate school with the resolute ambition of becom-
ing a “traditional” research scholar. But growth in academic positions is now very slow.
Some programs are even shrinking.
Most archaeology in North America and many parts of Europe is now conducted
as CRM projects, much of it mandated by law. This means that most (but certainly not
all) academic archaeology in American universities is carried out overseas, most com-
monly in Europe, Mesoamerica, or the Andes. Over the years, this means that there is
intense competition for the rare vacant academic jobs in well-trodden areas such as
Mesoamerica, and even more applicants for academic positions in North American
archaeology.
A recent study of American archaeologists found that only about 35 percent worked
in academia, and the number is diminishing every year. The moral is simple: If you
want to become an academic archaeologist, beware of overspecializing or of working
in too-crowded fields, and have other qualifications such as CRM or computer skills at
your disposal.
Museum jobs are rare, especially those that are purely research positions. A career in
museum work is rewarding but hard to come by, and requires specialized training in
conservation, exhibits, curation, or some other aspect of collections care in addition to
academic training.

Cultural Resource Management and Public Archaeology

These offer almost open-ended opportunities to those who are seeking a career man-
aging and saving the archaeological record. Time was when academic archaeologists
looked down on their CRM colleagues and considered them second-rate intellectual
citizens. The reverse has been true, too, for we have met CRM archaeologists who con-
sider academics tweed-suited dilettantes! All this is nonsense, of course, for all archae-
ologists are concerned with careful stewardship of the human past. Some of the greatest
opportunities in archaeology during the next century lie in the public archaeology arena
and in the private sector, where the challenges are far greater than the traditional aca-
demic concerns. Adapting to this reality will lead to many changes in undergraduate
and graduate curricula in coming years.
362 So You Want to Become an Archaeologist?
If you are interested in public archaeology or CRM, you have the choice of working
either in government or for some form of organization engaged in CRM activity, which
can be either a nonprofit group, perhaps attached to a museum, college, or university,
or a for-profit company operating entirely in the private sector. The latter come in many
forms and sizes, with larger companies offering the best opportunities and career poten-
tial, especially for entry-level archaeologists. Most public archaeology activity operates
through government, although a few private-sector firms also specialize in this work.
If you choose to work in the public sector, you can find opportunities in many federal
government agencies, among them the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land
Management. Many archaeologists work for state archaeological surveys and other such
organizations. Historical societies, such as that in Ohio, often employ archaeologists.
Whichever career track you choose, you will need a sound background in academic
archaeology and fieldwork experience, as well as suitable degrees, to follow a career
in these areas. Although you may receive some background training in CRM or public
archaeology during your undergraduate or graduate career, much of your training will
come on the job or through specialized courses taken as part of your work.
Whatever your interests in professional archaeology, we strongly advise you to
obtain a background and experience in CRM fieldwork and laboratory work as part of
your training.

Academic Qualifications and Graduate School

An undergraduate degree in archaeology qualifies you to work as a gofer on a CRM
excavation or an academic dig and little else, except for giving you a better knowledge
than most people have of the human past – not something to denigrate as a source of
enlightenment and enjoyment in later life. Many people work on CRM projects for a
number of years and live in motels – they even have their own informal newsletter!
Any form of permanent position in archaeology requires a minimum of an M.A.
(Master of Arts), which will qualify you for many government and private-sector posi-
tions. All academic positions at research universities and, increasingly, teaching posts
require a Ph.D.
Typically, an M.A. in archaeology requires two years of course work and some form of
field- or data-based paper and, at some institutions, an oral examination. The M.A. may
have a specialized slant, such as CRM or historic preservation, but most are general
degrees, which prepare you to teach at some two- or four-year colleges and univer-
sities and open you to many CRM or government opportunities. The advantage of the
M.A. degree is that it gives you a broad background in archaeology, which is essential
for any professional. It is the qualification of choice for many government and CRM or
public archaeology positions.
The Ph.D. is a specialized research degree, which qualifies you as a faculty mem-
ber to teach at a research university and at many institutions that stress teaching and
not research. This is the professional “ticket” for academic archaeologists and is cer-
tainly desirable for someone entering government or the private sector, where com-
plex research projects abound and management decisions are often needed. The typical
Ph.D. program requires at least two years of seminar, course, and field training, fol-
lowed by comprehensive examinations (written and often oral), M.A. papers, then a
formal research proposal and a period of intensive fieldwork that, in written form, con-
stitutes the Ph.D. dissertation. The average doctoral program takes about seven years to
complete and turns you into a highly specialized professional with some teaching and
 So You Want to Become an Archaeologist? 363
research experience. If you would like to complete your research somewhat faster, con-
sider studying in the UK, where an M.A. typically takes one year and you can complete
a Ph.D. – which usually has no taught component – in three years. But after these years,
you then have to find a job in a highly competitive marketplace. Yes, it is a daunting
prospect to face seven years or more of genteel poverty, but the intellectual and personal
rewards are considerable for someone with a true passion for archaeology and academic
research.

Thoughts on Not Becoming a Professional Archaeologist

Over many years of teaching archaeology, BF introduced thousands of people to the
subject. Only a handful became professional archaeologists. Most students who pass
through his courses go on to an enormous variety of careers – army rangers, bureau-
crats, international businesspeople, lawyers, politicians, real estate tycoons, teachers,
and even chefs and pastry cooks. At least two of his former students are in jail! But every
one of them is aware of archaeology and its role in the contemporary world and of the
remarkable achievements of our ancient forebears. This is by far the most important
part of one’s teaching, of far greater significance than any amount of professional train-
ing one may give graduate students.
One’s task as a beginning teacher is not to recruit people to the field – to create an
“in-group” who know all about radiocarbon dating or the archaeology of the central
Ohio valley or eastern Siberia – but to help create what the National Science Foundation
calls “an informed citizenry.” Some of one’s students end up with no interest in archae-
ology whatsoever; they find it boring and irrelevant to their lives. But you can be sure
they have heard of the subject and its remarkable achievements and have decided where
it fits in their lives. This is, after all, one of the objectives of an undergraduate education.
Having said this, many people take a single course in archaeology and develop an
active interest in the subject that endures through the rest of their lives. If you are one
of these individuals, you can stay involved, at least tangentially, with archaeology in
many ways.
Archaeology depends on informed amateur archaeologists (often called “avocation-
als”) who volunteer on excavations, in laboratories, and in museums. Many highly
important contributions to archaeology come from amateur archaeologists, often mem-
bers of local archaeological societies, who participate in digs and keep an eye out for
new discoveries in their areas. There is a strong tradition of amateur scholarship in
archaeology, especially in Europe, where some avocationals have become world author-
ities on specialized subjects such as ancient rabbit keeping or specific pottery forms –
and they publish regularly in academic journals.
Archaeology could not function without volunteers, whether on Earthwatch-
supported excavations or through quiet work behind the scenes cataloging artifacts or
running lecture programs. If you have a serious interest in volunteering and pursuing
archaeology on a regular basis as an amateur, there are many ways to become involved
through local organizations such as colleges, museums, archaeological societies, and
chapters of the Archaeological Institute of America. In these days of highly special-
ized research and professional scholarship, it is easy to say that there is no place for
amateurs. This arrogant statement is nonsense and misses the point. Amateurs bring
an extraordinary range of skills to archaeology. During our careers, we have worked
with, among others, an accountant (who straightened out BF’s excavation books), an
architect, a professional photographer and artist (who was a godsend in the field), a
364 So You Want to Become an Archaeologist?

Figure 15.1 S
tonehenge, Wiltshire, England. A celebrated Stone Age and Bronze Age shrine
that developed over many generations after 3000 b.c. and was used for more than
1,500 years.
(Creatas Images / Thinkstock by Getty Images)

jeweler (who analyzed gold beads), and an expert on slash-and-burn agriculture (who
had a passion for environmental history). Your talents are invaluable, and don’t take
no for an answer! One of our colleagues pointed out that some of his students have
gone on to highly successful and lucrative careers in business. Their quiet philan-
thropy has endowed professorships, paid for excavations, and supported students.
Enough said!
Many people develop an interest in the past that comes to the fore when they travel.
Their background in archaeology, obtained as undergraduates, enables them to visit
famous sites all over the world as informed observers and to enjoy the achievements of
ancient peoples to the fullest (see Figure 15.1). BF’s files are full of postcards and letters
from obscure places and well-known sites, like one mailed from Stonehenge: “Thank
you for introducing me to archaeology,” it reads. “I enjoyed Stonehenge so much more
after taking your course.” This postcard made his day, for archaeology cannot survive
without the involvement and enthusiasm not just of professionals but of everyone inter-
ested in the past. We are all stewards of a priceless and finite resource, which is vanish-
ing before our eyes.
 So You Want to Become an Archaeologist? 365

Figure 15.2 Two possibilities for the future of the past. Left: Archaeologists work at the Forks
National Historic Site, Manitoba, Canada.
(Ken Gillespie Photography / Alamy)
Right: A looted Nazca cemetery on the Peruvian coast. Such activities do irreparable
damage to the past. Compare this scene of devastation with the excavations illustrated
in Chapter 7.
(Universal Images Group Limited / Alamy)

Our Responsibilities to the Past

All of us, whether professional archaeologist, avocational fieldworker, casually inter-
ested traveler, or basically uninterested citizen, share a common responsibility for the
past. It is our collective cultural heritage, whether considering the Parthenon, the pyra-
mids of Giza, Cahokia, or the tomb of Chinese emperor Shihuangdi. This past extends
back deep into the Ice Age, for more than 3 million years, a precious legacy of cultural
achievement that is unique to humanity and something that we must cherish and pass
on to generations still unborn. The word steward is overused, but we are as much stew-
ards of the past as we are of the oceans, forests, and every part of the natural environ-
ment. Archaeology is different in one important respect: Once destroyed, its archives
can never be reconstructed. They are gone forever. Professional archaeologists subscribe
to strict and explicit ethics in their dealings with the past, but, in the final analysis, pre-
serving the past for the future is the responsibility of us all.
As we have emphasized many times in these pages, the world’s archaeological sites
are under attack from many sources: industrial development, mining, and agriculture
as well as treasure hunters, collectors, professional tomb robbers (see Figure 15.2), and
political movements. As we write, non-state-sanctioned IS militant ‘iconoclasts’ are
steadily blowing up and looting precious sites in the Middle East, in part to fund their
cause. Previously, the (state-sanctioned) war in Iraq also resulted in wholesale looting of
archaeological sites and museums.
No government can hope to free the necessary funds to protect its antiquities
adequately. And such countries as Egypt, Guatemala, and Mexico, with rich archaeo-
logical heritages, have almost overwhelming problems protecting even their well-known
366 So You Want to Become an Archaeologist?
sites. In the case of IS, it has gone beyond ‘mere’ illicit theft and into the realms of an
outright war on the pre- and non-Islamic heritage of the Middle East.
As for the smash and grab and looting of archaeology, we are very much part of the
problem. Demand far exceeds the supply, so even modest antiquities fetch high prices
in international markets. As long as there is a demand for antiquities among collectors
and we maintain our materialistic values about personal possessions, destruction of
archaeological sites will continue unabated. Even the necessary legal controls to prevent
destruction of archaeological sites are just barely in force in most parts of the world. Yet,
even in the bleakest of cases, there is still hope, which stems from the enormous num-
bers of informed people who have gained an interest in archaeology from university
and college courses or from chance encounters with archaeologists or the past. If suf-
ficient numbers of laypeople can influence community behavior and attitudes toward
archaeological sites and the morality of collecting, there is still hope that our descend-
ants will have archaeological sites to study and enjoy.
Despite the problems facing archaeology, we’re both very glad we became archaeolo-
gists and that our passion for the past remains unabated after many years in the field,
laboratory, and classroom. We’ve met many extraordinary people and been challenged
by complex research problems that have taken our careers in unexpected directions.
But the moments we cherish most are those rare occasions when you stand on an arch-
aeological site or among some deserted earthworks or weathered buildings, and the
past suddenly comes to life. We are lucky to have experienced this many times: at Mesa
Verde’s Cliff Palace the day after the first snowstorm of winter, when icicles hung from
the trees and we could imagine the smell of Ancestral Pueblo wood smoke and the
barking of dogs; on cloud-mantled earthworks in Britain where we could almost hear
the cries of Roman legionaries advancing into battle; and on a coastal shell midden in
southern California where we could envisage planked canoes landing on a fine summer
evening. These moments come without warning and are deeply emotional, triggered by
evocative sunsets, effects of cloud and light, or even by a chance thought, but they are
utterly precious.
The past is personal to us, however dedicated as scientists we are or however cas-
ually we visit a site. If the archaeological record vanishes, with all its great achievements
and moments of brilliant success and long-forgotten tragedy, our successors will never
be able to learn from the experience of our forebears or to enjoy the powerful and extra-
ordinarily satisfying emotional pull of the past. We owe this legacy to our children and
grandchildren.

A Simple Code of Archaeological Ethics for All

Is there a future for the past? Yes, but only if we all help, not only by influencing other
people’s attitudes toward archaeology but also by living by this simple code of ethics
that applies to all of us, professional archaeologist or not:

• Treat all archaeological sites and artifacts as finite resources.

• Never dig an archaeological site.
• Never collect artifacts for yourself or buy and sell them for personal gain.
• Adhere to all federal, state, local, and tribal laws that affect the archaeological
record.
• Report all accidental archaeological discoveries.
• Avoid disturbing any archaeological site, and respect the sanctity of all burial sites.
 So You Want to Become an Archaeologist? 367

SUMMARY
1. Chapter 15 summarizes the essential qualities of someone seeking to become an
archaeologist and lays out some of the career opportunities.
2. Career opportunities for professional archaeologists can be found in universities,
colleges, museums, government service, and private businesses both in the United
States and abroad.
3. Most archaeological jobs require at least an M.A. and many require a Ph.D.
4. Do not consider becoming a professional archaeologist unless you have an
above-average academic record, some field experience, strong support from your
professors, and a moral commitment not to collect artifacts for profit.
5. Even people who don’t want to become professional archaeologists can gain dig-
ging experience by attending a field school or by digging overseas.
6. Archaeology gives you insight into the past and the potential for involvement as an
informed layperson. It also enables you to enjoy the major archaeological sites of the
world in a unique way and to aid in archaeologists’ attempts to preserve the past.
7. All of us have ethical responsibilities to the past: not to collect artifacts; to report new
finds; and to obey federal, state, and tribal laws that protect archaeological sites.
8. Unless we all take our responsibility to the past seriously, the past has no future.

FURTHER READING
Joie Flatman, Becoming an Archaeologist: A Guide to Professional Pathways (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2011), is a useful starting point, but British-oriented. Marilyn Zeitlin’s The
American Archaeologist: A Profile (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1997), is essential reading
for any aspiring professional. Charles McGimsey, Public Archaeology (New York: Seminar Press,
1972), highlighted the crisis in North American archaeology a generation ago and is still rele-
vant. Colin Renfrew, Loot, Legitimacy, and Ownership (London: Duckworth, 2001), looks at the
problem of international trade in antiquities. Karen Vitelli, ed., Archaeological Ethics (Walnut
Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1997), is a useful anthology of writings on the subject.
Sites and Cultures Mentioned in the Text

These brief descriptions give some background on prehistoric sites and cultures men-
tioned in the text; they are not meant to be precise definitions. Ask your instructor for
more information and references if you need them. Some sites mentioned in passing are
not included in the list if their significance is self-evident.
Abbeville, France A town in the Somme Valley famous for its nearby gravels contain-
ing Stone Age artifacts.
Abri Pataud, France Large rockshelter near the Vezère River in the Dordogne region
of southwestern France, occupied by Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherers
between about 50,000 and 19,000 years ago.
Abu Hureyra, Syria One of the earliest farming villages in the world, where archae-
ologists documented the changeover from hunting and gathering to food production.
Abu Simbel, Egypt Ancient Egyptian temple erected by Rameses II in Nubia, c. 1250
b.c. The site with its seated figures of the pharaoh was moved to higher ground to pre-
vent its flooding by Lake Nasser in 1968 at a cost of $40 million.
Abydos, Egypt Abydos in Upper Egypt was the ancient Egyptian gateway to the
underworld and a sacred city. Egypt’s earliest pharaohs were buried here before
3000 b.c.
Acheulian Widespread Early Stone Age culture named after the town of Saint-Acheul
in northern France. The Acheulian culture flourished in Africa, western Europe, and
southern Asia from before a million years ago until less than 100,000 years before the
present. The Acheulians made many types of stone artifacts, including multipurpose
butchering hand axes and cleaving tools.
Adena, Ohio Distinctive burial cult and village culture in the Ohio Valley of the U.S.
Midwest. It flourished between about 700 b.c. and a.d. 200 and was remarkable for
its long-distance trading and distinctive burial cults expressed in large earthworks and
mounds.
‘Ain Ghazal, Jordan A farming settlement near Amman, dating to c. 7500 b.c. , fam-
ous for its ancestral figurines.
Ali Kosh, Iran Early farming site on the Deh Luran plain in Iran, where evidence
for cereal cultivation was found by flotation techniques. The site dates to as early as
7500 b.c.
Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) Pueblo peoples who flourished in the American Southwest
in the late first and early second millennium a.d. Builders of large pueblos.
Angkor Wat, Cambodia A Hindu shrine built by the Khmer ruler Suryavarman II in
a.d. 1117 as a representation of the Hindu universe.
 Sites and Cultures Mentioned in the Text 369
Avaris, Egypt Palace and trading site in Lower Egypt celebrated for its Minoan
(Cretan) wall paintings – evidence of trade between Egypt and Crete in about 1500 b.c.
Ban Na Di, Thailand Trading settlement and farming village dating from about 1400
to 400 b.c., with a cemetery showing evidence for social ranking.
Benin, Nigeria West African state ruled from the city of Benin from before a.d. 1400
to modern times.
Cahokia, Illinois A prominent Mississippian ceremonial center that reached its apo-
gee in about a.d. 1250.
Çatalhöyük, Turkey Early farming village in central Turkey, first occupied before 7500
b.c. and famous for its house shrines.
Cerén, El Salvador Maya village buried by an unexpected volcanic eruption in a.d.
684. The ash mantled the village so completely that entire household inventories, even
crops, are preserved in the archaeological record.
Chaco Canyon, New Mexico Complex of Ancestral Pueblo structures including both
pueblos and kivas dating to the late first millennium a.d.
Chavín, Peru A distinctive art style and set of religious beliefs, which spread widely
over highland and lowland Peru between 900 and 200 b.c.
Chavín de Huantar, Peru An important religious shrine of the first millennium b.c.,
center of the Chavín religious beliefs and cults.
Chichén Itzá, Mexico A major Maya ceremonial center in the northeastern Yucatán
dating to about the ninth century a.d., when it came under Toltec influence from the
highlands.
Clovis Paleo-Indian culture that flourished in North America, and perhaps further
afield, about 11,000 b.c. and somewhat earlier.
Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia Reconstruction of Virginia’s first capital city, carried
out partly with the aid of archaeological research.
Copán, Honduras Classic Maya city, a.d. 435 to 900.
Danger Cave, Utah Long-visited desert cave in the western United States, occupied
sporadically by Archaic foragers from c. 9000 b.c. to recent times.
Duch, Egypt Egyptian desert village of the first millennium b.c., famous for its
cemeteries.
Dust Cave, Alabama A stratified rockshelter with Late Paleo-Indian and Archaic
occupation, radiocarbon dated from about 8000 to 1500 b.c.
Easton Down, England Long barrow built as a communal sepulcher by Stone Age
farmers, c. 2500 b.c.
Epidauros, Greece Famed Classic Greek amphitheater first built in the fifth century b.c.
Eridu, Iraq Early city in the Mesopotamian delta that boasted of a major temple as
early as 4000 b.c. One of the earliest cities in the world.
Flag Fen, England Late Bronze Age field system and ceremonial center in eastern
England dating to c. 1100 b.c., famous for its wooden artifacts and timber posts and
trackways.
Folsom Paleo-Indian culture that flourished on the North American Plains after
11,000 b.c.
Fort Mose, Florida The first free African American community in North America,
occupied from 1738 to 1763.
370 Sites and Cultures Mentioned in the Text
Garnsey, New Mexico Bison kill site dating to a.d. 1550, where hunters selected males
for their higher fat content.
Giza, Egypt The pyramids at Giza were built in the desert near Cairo during Egypt’s
Old Kingdom, around 2550 b.c. The Great Pyramid is 481 feet (146.6 meters) high and
covers 13.1 acres (5.3 hectares).
Grasshopper Pueblo, Arizona Important Pueblo site occupied in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries a.d.
Grotte de Chauvet, France A spectacular painted cave in southeastern France, used
between about 31,000 and 24,000 years ago.
Hadar, Ethiopia Region of northeastern Africa where numerous hominin discov-
eries have been made, including Ardipithecus ramidus, dating to about 4.5 million
years ago.
Hadrian’s Wall, England Frontier fortification wall built by the Emperor Hadrian
between a.d. 122 and 130 to keep the Scots out of northern England and the northern-
most Roman province.
Halieis, Greece Classical town of the fourth century b.c., famous for its olive oil.
Herculaneum, Italy Roman town destroyed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in
a.d. 79.
Hidden Cave, Nevada A cave visited by hunter-gatherers exploiting nearby wetlands
about 1,000 years ago.
Hissarlik, Turkey Site of Homeric Troy in northwestern Turkey, which was an import-
ant Bronze Age city during the second millennium b.c.
Hochdorf, Germany Iron Age burial mound of a chieftain interred in about 550 b.c.,
remarkable for its rich grave furniture.
Hogup Cave, Utah Dry cave in the Great Basin occupied from c. 9000 b.c. until recent
times, famous for its excellent dry preservation of organic artifacts such as fiber sandals.
Hohokam, Arizona Southwestern cultural tradition that originated as early as 300
b.c. and lasted until a.d. 1500. The Hohokam people were farmers who occupied
much of what is now Arizona. Their cultural heirs are the O’odham Indians of today.
Hopewell, Ohio Between 200 b.c. and a.d. 600, the “Hopewell Interaction Sphere”
flourished in the Midwest. Hopewell religious cults and distinctive burial customs were
associated with an art tradition that spread far and wide through long-distance trading
connections.
Huaca del Sol, Peru A powerful capital of the Moche state on Peru’s north coast, occu-
pied c. a.d. 500 and extensively damaged by El Niños.
Huaca Loro, Peru Sacred site, settlement, and elite cemetery of the Sicán culture, c.
a.d. 800 to 1100.
Indus civilization, Pakistan Urban civilization based in the Indus Valley that flour-
ished from before 2500 to 1500 b.c.
Jomon tradition, Japan Japanese cultural tradition dating to before 12,000 b.c.
until about 300 b.c., remarkable for its early manufacturing of pottery and complex
hunter-gatherer culture.
Karnak, Egypt Site of the temple of the ancient Egyptian sun god Amun, which
reached the height of its glory in the New Kingdom, c. 1500 b.c.
Kennewick, Washington Location of a Native American burial dated to more than
9,000 years ago, the subject of ongoing controversy.
 Sites and Cultures Mentioned in the Text 371
Khorsabad, Iraq Palace of Assyrian King Sargon, eighth century b.c.
Kish, Iraq A city of the Sumerian civilization in southern Iraq, which was one of the
first cities, founded in the fourth millennium b.c.
Klasies River Cave, South Africa Middle Stone Age cave, occupied c. 120,000 to
100,000 years ago, that yielded fossil and cultural evidence for very early modern humans.
Knossos, Crete Palace and shrine complex in northern Crete, which started life as a
small village in about 6000 b.c. and became the major center of Minoan civilization
before being finally abandoned in the late second millennium b.c.
Koobi Fora, Kenya Location on the eastern shores of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya
where early traces of human culture have been found, dating to more than 2.5 million
years ago.
Koster, Illinois From before 7000 b.c. until less than 1,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers
and later farmers settled at this location on the Illinois River to exploit the fertile river
bottom. The site is unusual for its long stratigraphic sequence of Archaic and Woodland
settlements and abundant food remains.
Kourion, Cyprus Small Roman port in southwestern Cyprus in the eastern
Mediterranean overwhelmed by a great earthquake early on the morning of July 21,
a.d. 365. Excavations at the village have revealed many details of a long-forgotten
disaster.
Laetoli, Tanzania This East African site yielded the earliest hominin footprints,
potassium-argon dated to more than 3.5 million years ago.
La Madeleine, France Late Ice Age rockshelter containing extensive, stratified Stone
Age occupation dating back about 18,000 years. The type site of the Magdalenian cul-
ture, famous for its mobile and rock art.
Lascaux Cave, France Painted cave of the Magdalenian culture of southwestern France
dating to about 15,000 years ago.
Lovelock Cave, Nevada Desert site in the far western United States, occupied as early
as 7000 b.c. Located near a desert marsh, it has yielded minute details of prehistoric
desert adaptations over a long period.
Maeshowe, Scotland Stone Age passage grave on the Orkney Islands, c. 3100 to 2900 b.c.
Mahendraparvata, Cambodia A city of the Khmer empire, where the first Khmer ruler
Jayavarman II was consecrated in a.d. 802.
Maiden Castle, England A large Iron Age hill fort attacked and overrun by a Roman
legion in a.d. 43. Site of classic excavations before World War II.
Marki, Cyprus A Bronze Age village dating to c. 2200 b.c.
Meer, Belgium A Mesolithic hunter-gatherer camp in a sandy clearing in northern
Belgium, dating to c. 7600 b.c.
Mesa Verde, Colorado Deep canyon area famous for its pueblos, notably the Cliff
Palace, which reached their heyday in the twelfth century a.d.
Mesoamerica That area of Central America where state-organized societies (civiliza-
tions) arose.
Minoan civilization, Crete Bronze Age civilization on Crete, c. 2000 to 1450 b.c., fam-
ous for its widespread trading activities.
Mississippian culture An elaborately organized farming society comprising large and
small chiefdoms focused on the Mississippi Valley and the North American Southeast,
c. a.d. 1000 to 1450 and later.
372 Sites and Cultures Mentioned in the Text
Moche civilization Coastal state in northern coastal Peru, which reached its height
after a.d. 400.
Moundville, Alabama A Mississippian ceremonial center that reached its apogee after
a.d. 1100.
Mycenae, Greece Major palace of the Mycenaean civilization, c. 1500 b.c., famous for
its royal graves and beehive tombs.
Neanderthal, Germany Cave that yielded the first Neanderthal skull (named after the
site) in 1856.
Nelson’s Bay, South Africa Late Stone Age coastal cave in southeastern Africa, occu-
pied c. 5000 b.c.
Nimrud, Iraq Assyrian city, the biblical Calah.
Nineveh, Iraq Assyrian capital, famous for the palace of King Assurbanipal in the
seventh century b.c.
Nippur, Iraq Sumerian city in southern Iraq, c. 2800 b.c., celebrated in archaeological
circles for its clay tablet archives.
Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania Stratified lake beds with associated artifact scatters and
kill sites, also early hominins, dating from slightly before 1.75 million years ago up to
100,000 b.p.
Olmec One of the earliest lowland Mexican state-organized societies, Olmec culture
flourished from around 1500 b.c. to 500 b.c. Olmec people traded widely, had a dis-
tinctive art tradition that depicted human-like jaguars and both natural and supernat-
ural beings, and developed many of the religious traditions that were to sustain the
Maya and other Mesoamerican civilizations such as Teotihuacán.
Olsen–Chubbuck, Colorado An 8,000-year-old bison kill site on the North American
Plains that revealed many details of Paleo-Indian hunting and butchering techniques.
Olympia, Greece Site of the Olympic Games in the northern Peloponnese, c. 400 b.c.
Ozette, Washington Coastal settlement in Washington State occupied for at least
1,000 years by ancestors of the present-day Makah Indians. Ozette suffered disaster two
centuries ago when houses were buried by mud slides, which preserved them in perfect
condition for archaeologists to investigate in the 1970s.
Palenque, Mexico Classic Maya city and ceremonial center, which reached its height
in the mid first millennium a.d.
Paracas, Peru A large cemetery complex on Peru’s southern coast, where textiles are
exceptionally well preserved in mummified burials dating to between 600 and 150 b.c.
Pecos, New Mexico Ancestral (Anasazi) pueblo in the southwestern United States
that was occupied for much of the past 2,000 years and provided the first stratigraphic
sequence for Southwestern prehistory as a result of A. V. Kidder’s excavations.
Petra, Jordan A trading city and camel caravan terminus built by the Nabateans and
then controlled by the Romans in the early Christian era.
Pompeii, Italy Italian town destroyed by an eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in a.d. 79.
Pueblo Bonito, New Mexico Ancestral (Anasazi) pueblo first constructed about a.d.
850 and in its heyday in the twelfth century a.d.
Ring of Brodgar, Scotland Stone circle associated with Maeshowe and the Stones of
Stenness, c. 2900 a.d.
San José Mogote, Mexico Farming village in the Valley of Oaxaca, which flourished
after 1350 b.c. and contained four residential wards and a small shrine.
 Sites and Cultures Mentioned in the Text 373
Schoningen, Germany A northern German hunting site that yielded 400,000-year-old
wooden spears.
Shang civilization, China Early Chinese civilization that flourished from as early
as 2700 b . c . , when the Xia dynasty arose in the north. The Shang dynasty rose to
power around 1766 b . c . and ruled until 1122 b . c . Its rulers occupied a series of
capitals near the Yellow River, the most famous being Anyang, occupied around
1400 b . c .
Shiloh Mound Complex, Tennessee A Mississippian center on the Tennessee River,
dating from c. a.d. 1000 to 1350.
Sicán culture, Peru A coastal society that flourished on Peru’s north coast between
a.d. 800 and 1100.
Sipán, Peru Site of four spectacularly adorned warrior-priest graves of the Moche civ-
ilization, c. a.d. 400.
Skara Brae, Scotland Stone Age farming village on the Orkney Islands, occupied c.
3100 to 2500 b.c.
Snaketown, Arizona Major community of Hohokam people in southern Arizona,
famous for its ball court and extensive trade with other regions. In its heyday during
the early second millennium b.c.
Sounion, Greece A temple to the Greek sea god Poseidon dating to the fifth century
b.c., sited on a headland as a conspicuous landmark for mariners.
Star Carr, England Postglacial hunting site in northeast England dating to about 9200
b.c., remarkable for the bone and wooden artifacts recovered from a small birch-bark
platform at the edge of a small lake.
Stillwater Marsh, Nevada Hunter-gatherer site near the Carson Sink visited around
1,000 years ago.
Stonehenge, England Stone circles in southern Britain that formed a sacred precinct
as early as 2700 b.c. and remained in use until about 1600 b.c. Some authorities believe
Stonehenge was an astronomical observatory, but this viewpoint is controversial.
Stones of Stenness, Scotland Stone circle on the Orkney Islands associated with the
Maeshowe mound, 3100 to 2900 b.c.
Talepop, California Chumash Indian settlement in southern California remarkable
for its fish remains, dating to c. 1,000 years ago.
Tehuacán Valley, Mexico Valley in which evidence for a gradual shift from hunting
and gathering to deliberate cultivation of squashes and other minor crops, then maize,
has been documented. Tehuacán was occupied as early as 10,000 b.c., with maize agri-
culture appearing before 2700 b.c.
Telloh, Iraq Sumerian city where the civilization of that name was first recognized in
the 1870s.
Tenochtitlán, Mexico Spectacular capital of the Aztec civilization in the Valley of
Mexico, founded in a.d. 1325 and destroyed by Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés
in 1521.
Teotihuacán, Mexico A vast pre-Columbian city in highland Mexico that flourished
from as early as 200 b.c. until it declined c. a.d. 750. Teotihuacán maintained extensive
political and trade contacts with the Maya civilization of the Yucatán and is famed for
its enormous public buildings and pyramids.
Tikal, Guatemala Classic Maya city in the Guatemalan lowlands that reached its
height in about a.d. 600.
374 Sites and Cultures Mentioned in the Text
Tiwanaku, Bolivia An important ceremonial center and state that flourished near
Lake Titicaca in the Andean highlands in the first millennium a.d.
Tollund, Denmark Site of a bog corpse dating to the Danish Iron Age, c. 2,000 years
ago. The man was strangled, apparently a sacrificial victim.
Tsoelike River rockshelter, Lesotho A rockshelter famous for a painting of a fishing
scene of people spearing their catch from boats or canoes. Date unknown, probably the
last 1,000 years.
Uluburun, Turkey Spectacular Bronze Age shipwreck dating to 1305 b.c. with cargo
from all over the eastern Mediterranean.
Ur, Iraq Biblical city in southern Iraq that grew from a tiny farming hamlet founded as
early as 4700 b.c., known for its Early Dynastic Sumerian burials, where a ruler’s entire
retinue committed institutionalized suicide.
Uxmal, Mexico Late Classic Maya city and ceremonial center in the northern Yucatán.
Valley of the Kings, Egypt Narrow, dry valley where Egypt’s New Kingdom phar-
aohs, including Tutankhamun, were buried.
Wroxeter, England Roman city in west-central England dating to the first few centur-
ies after Christ.
Glossary of Technical Terms

This glossary gives informal definitions of key words and ideas in the text. It is not a
comprehensive dictionary of archaeology. Jargon is kept to a minimum, but a few tech-
nical expressions are inevitable. Terms such as adaptation and mutation, which are com-
mon in contexts other than archaeology, are not listed. A good dictionary will clarify
these and other such words.
absolute chronology Dating in calendar years before the present.
accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) Method of radiocarbon dating that counts
actual C-14 atoms. Requires much smaller samples for precise dates than older methods.
activity area Patterning of artifacts in a site indicating that a specific activity, such as
stone toolmaking, took place.
agency The assumption that a person or group of people is responsible for cultural
change.
analogy Process of reasoning whereby two entities that share some similarities are
assumed to share many others.
analysis Stage of archaeological research that involves describing and classifying arti-
factual and nonartifactual data.
anthropology Study of humanity in the widest possible sense. Anthropology studies
humanity from the earliest times up to the present, and it includes cultural and physical
anthropology and archaeology.
antiquarian Someone interested in the past who collects and digs up antiquities unsci-
entifically, in contrast to the scientific archaeologist.
archaeological data Material recognized as significant evidence by the archaeologist
and collected and recorded as part of the research. The four main classes of archaeo-
logical data are artifacts, features, structures, and food remains.
archaeological record Material remains of the past, archaeological sites, artifacts, food
remains, and so on, which form the surviving database for the study of the human past.
archaeological survey Systematic attempts to locate, identify, and record the distri-
bution of archaeological sites on the ground and against the natural geographic and
environmental background.
archaeological unit Arbitrary unit of classification set up by archaeologists to con-
veniently separate in time and space one grouping of artifacts from another.
archaeologist Someone who studies the past using scientific methods, with the motive
of recording and interpreting ancient cultures rather than collecting artifacts for profit
or display.
376 Glossary of Technical Terms
archaeology Special form of anthropology that uses material remains to study often
extinct human societies. The objectives of archaeology are to construct culture history,
reconstruct past lifeways, and study cultural process.
area excavation Excavation of a large horizontal area, usually used to uncover houses
and prehistoric settlement patterns. See horizontal excavation.
artifact Any object manufactured or modified by human beings.
assemblage All the artifacts found at a site, including the sum of all subassemblages
at the site.
association Relationship between an artifact and other archaeological finds and a site
level or other artifact, structure, or feature in the site.
Assyriologist Scholar who studies Assyrian civilization.
attribute Well-defined feature of an artifact that cannot be further subdivided.
Archaeologists identify types of attributes, including form, style, and technology, in
order to classify and interpret artifacts.
attritional age profile Distribution of ages in an animal population that results from
selective hunting or predation.
band Simple form of human social organization that flourished for most of prehistory.
Bands consist of a family or a series of families, usually ranging from twenty to fifty
people.
biblical archaeologist A student of the archaeology of the Bible, specializing in
southwestern Asia.
bioarchaeology The multidisciplinary study of ancient human remains.
blade In stone technology, a term applied to punch-struck flakes, usually
removed from a cylindrical core. Often characteristic of prehistoric societies after
35,000 years ago.
bone chemistry Technique that analyzes isotopes in bone to determine a subject’s diet.
cambium Viscid substance under the bark of trees in which the annual growth of
wood and bark takes place.
catastrophic age profile Distribution of ages in an animal population as a result of
death by natural causes.
characterization Methods of identifying the sources of prehistoric artifacts, especially
those in clay, metal, and stone.
chiefdom Form of social organization more complex than a tribal society that has
evolved some form of leadership structure and some mechanisms for distributing goods
and services throughout the society. The chief who heads such a society and the special-
ists who work for the chief are supported by the voluntary contributions of the people.
chronological types Types defined by form that are time markers.
chronometric chronology Dating in years before the present as statements of stat-
istical probability that yield date ranges. Principal methods are potassium-argon and
radio­carbon dating.
civilization See state-organized society.
Classical archaeologist A student of the Classical civilizations of Greece and Rome.
classification Ordering of archaeological data into groups and classes, using various
ordering systems.
 Glossary of Technical Terms 377
cluster sampling Sampling using clusters of elements.
cognitive archaeology See cognitive-processual archaeology.
cognitive-processual archaeology Theoretical approach to archaeology that combines
processual approaches with other data to study religious beliefs and other intangibles.
community In archaeology, the tangible remains of the activities of the maximum
number of people who together occupied a settlement at any one period.
compliance process In CRM, the process of ensuring that legal requirements sur-
rounding archaeological resources are fulfilled.
component Association of all the artifacts from one occupation level at a site.
conchoidal fracture Type of fracture characteristic of crystalline rocks used for ancient
stone tool manufacture.
context Position of an archaeological find in time and space, established by measuring
and assessing its associations, matrix, and provenance. The assessment includes study
of what has happened to the find since it was buried in the ground.
coprolite Excrement preserved by desiccation or fossilization.
core In archaeology, a lump of stone from which human-struck flakes have been
removed.
crop mark Differential growth in crops and vegetational cover that reveals from the
air the outlines of archaeological sites.
cross-dating Dating of sites by objects of known age or artifact association of
known age.
cultural anthropology Aspect of anthropology focusing on cultural facets of human
societies. A term widely used in the United States.
cultural ecology Study of the dynamic interactions between human societies and their
environments. Under this approach, culture is the primary adaptive mechanism used
by human societies.
cultural process Deductive approach to archaeological research that is designed to
study the changes and interactions in cultural systems and the processes by which
human cultures change throughout time. Processual archaeologists use both descrip-
tive and explanatory models.
cultural resource management (CRM) Conservation and management of archaeo-
logical sites and artifacts as a means of protecting the past.
cultural resources The human-made and natural features associated with human
activity.
cultural system Perspective on culture that thinks of culture and its environment as a
number of linked systems in which change occurs through a series of minor linked vari-
ations in one or more of these systems.
culture Theoretical concept used by archaeologists and anthropologists to describe
humankind’s external means of adapting to the natural environment. Human culture is
a set of designs for living that helps mold our responses to different situations. A “cul-
ture” in archaeology is an arbitrary unit meaning similar assemblages of artifacts found
at several sites, defined in a precise context of time and space.
culture history Approach to archaeology assuming that artifacts can be used to build
up a generalized picture of human culture and descriptive models in time and space
and that these can be interpreted.
378 Glossary of Technical Terms
curation The conservation, management, and storage of archaeological data.
data acquisition The process of acquiring archaeological data from excavation, sur-
vey, or laboratory analysis.
dendrochronology Tree-ring chronology.
descriptive types Types based on the physical or external properties of an artifact.
diffusion (diffusionism) Spread of a culture trait from one area to another by means
of contact between people.
direct historical approach Archaeological technique of working backward in time
from historic sites of known age into earlier times.
ecofact Object not modified by human manufacture brought into a site (e.g., an
unworked pebble brought into an early human occupation site).
ecosystem Environmental system maintained by the regulation of vertical food chains
and patterns of energy flow.
Egyptologist An archaeologist specializing in the archaeology of ancient Egypt.
electromagnetic survey Subsurface detection method that measures conductivity of
the soil to aid in locating buried features.
electronic spin resonance (ESR) A dating method that measures radiation-induced
defects or the density of trapped electrons within bone or shell.
element sampling Sampling that uses an arbitrary grid system.
epiphysis Articular end of a long bone, which fuses at adulthood.
ethnoarchaeology Living archaeology, a form of ethnography that deals mainly with
material remains. Archaeologists carry out living archaeology to document the relation-
ships between human behavior and the patterns of artifacts and food remains in the
archaeological record.
ethnographer An anthropologist who studies the culture, technology, and economy
of human societies.
ethnographic analogy Use of analogies from living societies and cultures to interpret
those from the past.
ethnologist An anthropologist who engages in the comparative study of human
cultures.
excavation Digging of archaeological sites, removal of the matrix, observance
of the provenance and context of the finds therein, and recording of them in a
three-dimensional way.
experimental archaeology Use of carefully controlled modern experiments to provide
data to aid in interpretation of the archaeological record.
feature Artifact, such as a house or storage pit, that cannot be removed from a site;
normally, it is only recorded.
feces Excrement.
feedback A concept in archaeological applications of systems theory reflecting the
continually changing relationship between cultural variables and their environment.
fission track dating Dates minerals containing uranium by measuring the fission
tracks in the material, damage caused by particle fragmentation.
flotation In archaeology, recovering plant remains by using water to separate seeds
from their surrounding deposit.
 Glossary of Technical Terms 379
forensic archaeology The study of ancient injuries and other pathologies using skel-
etal material and other approaches.
functional type Type based on cultural use or function rather than on outward form
or chronological position.
general systems theory The notion that any organism or organization can be studied
as a system broken down into many interacting subsystems, or parts; sometimes called
cybernetics.
geoarchaeology Study of archaeology using the methods and concepts of the earth
sciences.
geographic information systems (GIS) Computer-generated mapping systems that
allow archaeologists to plot and analyze site distributions against environmental and
other background data derived from remote sensing, digitized maps, and other sources.
ground-penetrating radar See subsurface (ground-penetrating) radar.
half-life Time required for one half of a radioactive isotope to decay into a stable elem-
ent. Used as a basis for radiocarbon and other dating methods.
Harris lines Lines found on human bones that are evidence for malnutrition episodes.
hermeneutics The art of interpretation.
historical archaeologists Scientists who work on archaeological sites from periods
from which written records exist.
historical archaeology Study of archaeological sites in conjunction with historical
records. It is sometimes called historic sites archaeology or text-aided archaeology.
history Study of the past through written records.
Holocene From the Greek holos, “whole,” and kainos, “new,” thus meaning “entirely
recent,” and covering geological time since the end of the Ice Age 15,000 years ago.
horizon Widely distributed set of culture traits and artifact assemblages whose distri-
bution and chronology allow one to assume that they spread rapidly. Horizons are often
formed of artifacts that were associated with widespread, distinctive religious beliefs.
horizontal (area) excavation Archaeological excavation designed to uncover large
areas of a site, especially settlement layouts.
household group Arbitrary archaeological unit defining artifact patterns reflecting
the activities that take place around a house and assumed to belong to one household.
human culture See culture.
industrial archaeologist An archaeologist who studies artifacts, buildings, and tech-
nology of the Industrial Revolution.
industry All the particular artifacts made of different materials found at a site that
were made at the same time by the same population.
inorganic materials Material objects that are not part of the animal or vegetable
kingdom.
interpretation Stage in research at which the results of archaeological analyses are
synthesized and we attempt to explain their meaning.
invention Creation or evolution of a new idea.
landscape A perception of an environment created by humans.
landscape of memory A perception of landscape retained by people during their life-
times, including memories of earlier perceptions.
380 Glossary of Technical Terms
LIDAR Light detection and ranging based on laser altimetry, an optical equivalent of
radar which measures height with a laser range finder.
linguistic anthropologist Scientist who studies human languages and culture.
lithic analysis The study of stone technology and artifacts.
macrobotanical remains Easily recognizable items preserved in a hearth or charcoal.
magnetometer survey Measures magnetic fields on archaeological sites, producing
subsurface contour maps of buried features.
market Place where people congregate to buy, sell, and exchange goods and commod-
ities, usually with relatively stable prices.
Matuyama–Brunhes event Moment 780,000 years ago when the earth’s magnetic
polarity reversed; named after the two geologists who identified it.
Mayanist Scholar who studies ancient Maya civilization.
Mesolithic Rather dated term sometimes applied by Old World archaeologists to the
period of transition between the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras. No precise economic or
technological definition has ever been formulated.
mica Mineral that occurs in a glittering, scaly form; widely prized for ornament.
microlith A distinctive form of small tool, often an arrow barb, used by Mesolithic
peoples in the Old World.
midden In archaeology, an accumulation of food remains and other occupation deb-
ris. Often used to describe accumulations of shells and mollusks, hence “shell midden.”
middle-range theory A way of seeking accurate means for identifying and measuring
specified properties of past cultural systems.
migration Movements of entire societies that decide to change their own sphere of
influence.
mitigation The process of minimizing damage to cultural resources such as archaeo-
logical sites as part of the management of the archaeological record.
multilinear cultural evolution Theory of cultural evolution that sees each human cul-
ture evolving in its own way by adaptation to diverse environments. Sometimes divided
into four broad evolutionary stages of social organization (band, tribe, chiefdom, and
state-organized society).
neutron activation analysis The study of trace element clusters in clay vessels by acti-
vating neutrons.
noncultural processes Events and processes of the natural environment that impact
on the archaeological record.
normative view View of human culture arguing that one can identify the abstract
rules regulating a particular culture; a commonly used basis for studying archaeological
cultures throughout time.
obsidian Volcanic glass.
obsidian hydration A dating method that measures the build-up of hydration layers
on obsidian fragments.
Oldowan tradition The earliest stoneworking tradition, dating from about 2.6 million
to 2 million years ago. Named after Olduvai Gorge.
opal phytoliths Minute particles of silica from plant cells created from hydrated silica
dissolved in groundwater that is absorbed through a plant’s roots and carried through
its vascular system.
 Glossary of Technical Terms 381
optical stimulated luminescence (OSL) A form of thermoluminescence dating
that uses laser technology to date the emissions from quartz and feldspar grains in
archaeological sites.
oral tradition Knowledge, in the form of histories, practical knowledge, and traditions
and values, passed orally from one person to another.
organic materials Materials such as bone, wood, horn, or hide that were once living
organisms.
paleoanthropology The multidisciplinary study of archaic humans and their behavior.
paleoethnobotanist One who studies prehistoric botany.
paleopathology The study of ancient pathological conditions, mainly using
human bones.
palynology (pollen analysis) The study of ancient vegetation using minute pollen
spores.
passage grave A form of communal burial used by Neolithic people in the British Isles.
paste In ceramic studies, the type of clay used to fabricate a vessel.
patterns of discard Remains left for investigation after natural destructive forces have
affected artifacts and food remains abandoned by their original users.
permafrost Permanently frozen subsoil.
petrological analysis Sourcing of toolmaking stone using trace elements and other
characteristics of the rock. Widely used to trace the extent of ax trade in Stone Age
Europe.
phase Archaeological unit defined by characteristic groupings of culture traits that
can be identified precisely in time and space. It lasts for a relatively short time and is
found at one or more sites in a locality or region. Its culture traits are clear enough to
distinguish it from other phases.
physical anthropology Basically, biological anthropology, which includes the study of
fossil human beings, genetics, primates, and blood groups.
Pleistocene The last major geological epoch, extending from about 2.5 million years
ago until about 13,000 b.c. It is sometimes called the Quaternary, or the Great Ice Age.
postprocessual archaeology Theoretical approaches to archaeology that are critical of
processual archaeology and emphasize social factors in human societies.
potassium-argon dating Absolute dating technique based on the decay rate of potas-
sium 40K, which becomes 40Ar.
potsherd A fragment of a clay vessel.
prehistoric archaeologist (prehistorian) Archaeologist who studies the prehistory of
humankind.
prehistory Millennia of human history preceding written records.
prestate society Small-scale society based on the community, band, or village.
primary context An undisturbed association, matrix, and provenience.
probabilistic sampling Means of relating small data samples in mathematical ways to
much larger populations.
processual archaeology An approach to archaeology that uses deductive research
methodology – research design and the scientific method – to analyze conditions of
cultural change.
382 Glossary of Technical Terms
public archaeology Archaeological education to inform the general public about
archaeology and the past.
Quaternary See Pleistocene.
radiocarbon dating Absolute dating method based on measuring the decay rate of
the carbon isotope, carbon 14, to stable nitrogen. The resulting dates are calibrated with
tree-ring chronologies, from radiocarbon ages into dates in calendar years.
random sampling Sampling method using random choice of samples to obtain
unbiased samples.
reciprocity In archaeology, the exchange of goods between two parties, implying obli-
gation to give a gift in exchange.
redistribution Dispersal of trade goods from a central place throughout a society, a
complex process that was a critical part of the evolution of civilization.
reductive technology Technology in which an artisan acquires material, then shapes
it by removing flakes or other fragments until it is shaped to the finished product.
Normally applied to stone technology.
refitting (retrofitting) Reassembling of flaked stone waste fragments and cores to
reconstruct ancient lithic technologies.
relative chronology Time scale developed by the law of superposition or artifact
ordering.
remote sensing Reconnaissance and site survey methods using such devices as aerial
photography to detect subsurface features and sites.
research design Carefully formulated and systematic plan for executing archaeo-
logical research.
resistivity survey Measurement of differences in electrical conductivity in soils, used
to detect buried features such as walls and ditches.
sampling Science of assessing the reliability of data through the use of probability
theory.
satellite sensor imagery Method of recording sites from the air using infrared
radiation that is beyond the practical spectral response of photographic film. Useful
for tracing prehistoric agricultural systems that have disturbed the topsoil over
wide areas.
secondary context A context of an archaeological find that has been disturbed by sub-
sequent human activity or natural phenomena.
Section 106 process See compliance process.
seriation techniques Methods used to place artifacts in chronological order; artifacts
closely similar in form or style are placed close to one another.
settlement archaeology Study of ancient settlements and settlement distributions in
the context of their landscape.
settlement pattern Distribution of human settlement on the landscape and within
archaeological communities.
shovel pits Test pits, typically laid out in lines, excavated with a few shovel strokes.
Used to define the limits of shallow sites.
site Any place where objects, features, or ecofacts manufactured or modified by
human beings are found. A site can range from a living site to a quarry site, and it can
be defined in functional and other ways.
 Glossary of Technical Terms 383
site catchment analysis Inventorying natural resources within a given distance of
a site.
site-formation processes The processes, natural and humanly caused, that modify the
material remains of the past in the ground after their abandonment.
social anthropologist An anthropologist who studies social organization.
sourcing See characterization.
spatial analysis Analysis of spatial relationships in the archaeological record.
spectrographic analysis Chemical analysis that involves passing the light from a
number of trace elements through a prism or diffraction grating that spreads out the
wavelengths in a spectrum. This enables researchers to separate the emissions and iden-
tify different trace elements. A useful approach for studying metal objects and obsidian
artifacts.
stakeholder An individual or group with a vested interested in an archaeological site
or find.
state-organized society Preindustrial civilization marked by cities, centralized gov-
ernment, social stratification, and large-scale social complexity. Often called a civilization.
stewardship The process of managing the archaeological record for future genera-
tions, in perpetuity.
stratified sampling Probabilistic sampling technique used to cluster and isolate sam-
ple units when regular spacing is inappropriate for cultural reasons.
stratigraphic excavation Excavation that involves exposing individual layers.
stratigraphy Observation of the superimposed layers in an archaeological site.
stylistic type Type based on stylistic distinctions.
subassemblage Association of artifacts denoting a particular form of prehistoric activ-
ity practiced by a group of people.
subsistence How people acquire food and make their living.
subsurface (ground-penetrating) radar Radar sets used to detect subsurface features
on archaeological sites without excavation.
subtractive technology See reductive technology.
superposition The principle, borrowed from geology, that states that a stratigraphic
layer overlying another is younger than the one below it.
surface collection Collection of archaeological finds from sites with the objective
of gathering representative samples of artifacts from the surface. Surface survey also
establishes the types of activity on the site, locates major structures, and gathers infor-
mation on the most densely occupied areas of the site that could be most productive for
total or sample excavation.
taphonomy Study of the processes by which animal bones and other fossil remains
are transformed after deposition.
taxonomy Ordered set of operations that results in the subdividing of objects into
ordered classifications.
tell Arabic word for an occupation mound; a term referring to archaeological sites of
this type in the Near East.
temper In ceramic studies, the fine-ground coarse elements such as sand or ground-up
shell added to clay to help it bind during firing.
384 Glossary of Technical Terms
test pit Excavation unit used to sample or probe a site before large-scale excavation or
to check surface surveys.
theory In archaeology, a body of theoretical concepts providing both a framework and
a means for archaeologists to look beyond the facts and material objects for explanations
of events that took place in prehistory.
thermoluminescence (TL) Chronometric dating method that measures the amount of
light energy released by a baked clay object when heated rapidly. Gives an indication of
the time elapsed since the object was last heated.
three-age system Technological subdivision of the prehistoric past developed for Old
World prehistory in 1816.
total data station An electronic surveying device used for surveying sites and
excavations.
trace element analysis Means of identifying the sources of artifacts and raw materials
using X-ray spectrometry and other techniques that identify distinctive trace elements
in stones and minerals. Trace element analysis is used to study the sources of obsidian
and other materials traded over long distances.
tradition Persistent technological or cultural patterns identified by characteristic arti-
fact forms. These persistent forms outlast a single phase and can occur over a wide area.
transect In archaeology, a corridor of statistically selected landscape intensively exam-
ined during field survey.
tribe A larger group of bands unified by kinship and governed by a council of repre-
sentatives from the bands or kin groups within it.
type In archaeology, a grouping of artifacts created for comparison with other groups.
This grouping may or may not coincide with the actual tool types designed by the ori-
ginal manufacturers.
typology Classification of types.
underwater archaeologist Scientist who studies archaeological sites and shipwrecks
beneath the surface of the water.
uniformitarianism Doctrine that states the earth was formed by the same natural geo-
logical processes operating today.
unilinear cultural evolution Late-nineteenth-century evolutionary theory envisaging
all human societies as evolving along one track of cultural evolution from simple hunt-
ing and gathering to literate civilization.
uranium series dating A dating method that measures the steady decay of uranium
into other elements in formations made up of calcium carbonates, such as limestone.
vertical excavation Excavation undertaken to establish a chronological sequence, nor-
mally covering a limited area.
zooarchaeologist Scientist who studies animal remains in archaeology.
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Index

Page numbers in italics are figures; with ‘t’ are tables; with ‘g’ are glossary terms.

Abandoned Shipwrecks Act of 1988 (US) 344 anthropology 6, 39, 229, 375g
Abbeville (France) 9, 368 antiquarians 7, 375g
Abri Pataud (France) 174, 368 Antiquities Act of 1906 (US) 340
absolute chronology 112–16, 114, 375g antler technologies 210–11, 222
Abu Hureyra (Syria) 173, 287, 368; and Archaeological Conservancy 341
agriculture 26, 250, 274, 308–9; women 321, archaeological record 217, 375g; artifacts/
321–2; work-related injuries 308–9, 321–2 features/ecofacts 72–3; context 74; and
Abu Simbel (Egypt) 12, 368 ethnoarchaeology 231–4; and ethnographic
Abydos (Egypt) 207, 368 analogy 229–31; experimental archaeology
academic archaeology 346, 361, 362 235–6; and middle-range theory 226–8;
accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 117–18, preservation 220–6, 225, 226; and sites
119, 375g 70–2, 218–20, 221; and traditional
Acheulian culture 79, 201, 203, 204, 368 lifeways 228–9
Acosta, José de 19 archaeological research 129–32, 130
activity areas 289, 375g Archaeological Resources Protection Act
adaptive views 60 (ARPA) of 1979 (US) 343
Adena (Ohio) 79, 166, 181, 330, 368 archaeological survey 375g; ground level
aerial photography 142–3, 143 143–6; and remote sensing 137–43, 141, 143;
African Americans 317–20; burial ground and sampling 146–7
(New York City) 339–40, 340 archaeologists 41–2, 375g
Age of Discovery 54 archaeology, definitions 6, 34, 60, 376g
agency 89, 375g Arizona: Grasshopper Pueblo 263, 370;
agriculture 26, 51t, 53–4; England 239; and Hohokam/Hohokam culture 166, 169,
the Ice Age 250; Mesopotamia 88; plants 197, 370, 373; Lower Verde Valley 346;
272–5; and pollen analysis 248; settlements Snaketown 197, 373; Tucson 233–4
282, 296 Arnold, J. R. 117, 119
‘Ain Ghazal (Jordan) 330, 331, 368 artifacts 72–3, 73, 376g; and absolute
aircraft/satellite imagery 138–42 chronology 113–14; classification 186–90,
Alabama: Dust Cave 166, 174, 272, 369; 187; patternings 199–200, 202; preservation
Moundville 49, 372 220–6; and relative chronology 110–11,
Ali Kosh (Iran) 274, 328, 368 112–13; reuse of 219
alternative histories 94 assemblages 103–4, 190, 199–200, 376g
Alva, Walter 63 association, law of 103, 104, 375g
amateur archaeologists 363–4 Assyrians 12–14, 13
American Cultural Resources Association 350 attributes, of types 196–9, 202, 376g
Amesbury Archer 306, 313–14 attritional age profile 270, 271, 376g
analysis 132, 375g Australia 36, 38, 51t, 53
ancestors 35, 36 Australopithecus 11, 52, 174
Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) 45, 116, 139, 239, Avaris (Egypt) 113, 369
254–5, 368, 371, 372 Avebury (England) 222, 223, 280, 300
Anderson, David 159 Aztecs 37, 47, 54, 198–9, 199, 209; and
Angkor Wat (Cambodia) 17, 93, 141, 353, 368 gender 322–3; religion 332, 334–5; see also
animals 259 Tenochtitlán (Mexico)
 Index 387
bacteria 220–1 passage graves 300; relative chronology 112;
Ballona Wetlands (California) 346 and social ranking 315
Ball, Robert 235 Burkitt, Miles 358
Ban Chiang (Thailand) 311 butchery 269–71, 270
Bandelier, Adolph 21–2
bands 324, 376g Cahen, Daniel 31, 206, 235
Ban Na Di (Thailand) 315–16, 369 Cahokia (Illinois) 151, 369
Barnhouse (Scotland) 300–1, 302–4, 302, 371 California: Ballona Wetlands 346; China
Basin of Mexico 96, 145, 293–4, 296 Lake Naval Air Weapons Station 341;
basketry 72, 193, 211, 222, 230, 320, 344, 351; Chumash Indians 276, 283, 308, 310; Coso
and gender 192; preservation of 173 Petroglyphs National Historic Site 341,
Bass, George 329 342; obsidian 329; San Diego 276; Talepop
Baten, Joerg 307–8 276, 373
behavior, human 95–8 Cambodia: Angkor Wat 17, 93, 141, 353, 368;
Belgium, Meer 30, 206, 235, 371 Mahendraparvata 141, 371
Belize 47, 141, 272 campsites, excavation of 173, 174
Bell, Gertrude 14, 14 Canada, Ice Age 245–6, 245–6
Belzoni, Giovanni 11–12 cannibalism 310
Benin (Nigeria) 107, 369 caravans 327, 327
Bering Land Bridge 246, 246 careers in archaeology 358–62;
Bering Strait 19, 210 qualifications 362–3
Binford, Lewis 89, 200, 226, 269, 271 Carnarvon, George Herbert, 5th Earl of
Bintcliff, John 89–90 (Lord Carnarvon) 5–6
bioarchaeology 306, 308, 376g; groups Carter, Howard 5–6, 5, 27
314–20; individuals 311–14; malnutrition/ Carver, Martin 157, 161, 168
stress/work-related injury 308–10, 309; Çatalhöyük (Turkey) 284, 289, 328, 369
and sex/age 307–8; and society 324–5; and catastrophic age profile 271, 376g
strontium 310–11; and violence 310 Catherwood, Frederick 20–1, 21, 144
birds (bone) 275 Caton-Thompson, Gertrude 18
bison 95, 102, 120, 135; Garnsey (New Caulfield, Seamus 281, 297
Mexico) 271, 370; Grotte de Chauvet 44; caves, excavation of 173–4, 175
Olsen-Chubbuck (Colorado) 201, 268, Caves of a Thousand Buddhas (China) 16, 17
271, 372 Céide Fields (Ireland) 281–2, 282, 297
Black Mesa project 346 cemeteries see burials
Black Sea 249–50 ceremonial sites, excavation of 178–9, 179
Black, Stephen 130 Cerén (El Salvador) 104, 135, 151–2, 163,
blades 204, 376g 224–5, 228, 285, 369
Blakey, Michael 339 Chaco Canyon (New Mexico) 45, 51t, 115,
Bolivia: Lake Titicaca 47–8; Tiwanaku 45, 48, 374 116, 139, 140, 254–6
Bonaparte, Napoleon 11 Champollion, Jean François 11
bone: animal 222, 264–71, 266, 275; characterization 328–9, 376g
see also diet; human see bioarchaeology Chauvet, Jean-Marie 42–3
bone chemistry 274, 376g Chavín/Chavín de Huantar (Peru) 83, 84,
bone technology 210–11 195, 195, 203, 369
Botta, Paul-Emile 12 Chesowanja (East Africa) 205
Bourget, Steve 240 Cheyenne Outbreak 320
Bouri (Ethiopia) 175 Chichén Itzá (Mexico) 20
Breuil, Henri 358 chiefdoms 324–5, 376g
Brodgar see Ring of Brodgar China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station
bronze 208 (California) 341
Bronze Age 8–9; barrows near Stonehenge 8; chronological types 197, 376g
Marki (Cyprus) 287–9, 288, 371 chronology see dating
Brown, James 159–61 chronometric chronology 117–25, 118, 119,
Brown, Kenneth 318 120t, 376g
Brumfiel, Elizabeth 322–3 Chumash Indians 276, 283, 308, 310
Bureau of Land Management (US) 362 Clark, Desmond 358
burials 70; African American burial ground Clark, Grahame 25
339–40, 340; and association 103, 104, 105; classification 186–90, 190–1, 376g
and culture 62, 63; excavation of 180–1, clay technologies 206–8, 207
180; Moche civilization 223; mounds 175–6; Clendinnen, Inga 334–5
388 Index
climate change 239; long-term 241–7, 243–6; culture history 68, 78–9, 377g; diffusion
short-term 141, 239, 240–1, 249–56, 251–2 82–3, 83; invention 79, 81; migration 83–5;
Clovis culture 135, 197, 369 noncultural models 85–6
cluster sampling 147, 377g curation 350–1, 378g
“cognitive code” 60 Cushing, Frank Hamilton 21–2
cognitive-processual archaeology 90–3, 377g Cuvier, Georges 9
coins, and dating 114 cyclical time 107–8
collectors 7, 33 Cyprus: Kourion 180, 219, 219–20, 371; Marki
Colonial Williamsburg (Virginia) 31, 172, 369 287–9, 288, 371
Colorado: Mancos Pueblo 310; Mesa Verde
51t, 115, 256, 366, 371; Olsen-Chubbuck Danger Cave (Utah) 173, 369
201, 268, 271, 372 Dart, Raymond 11
communities377g Darwin, Charles 9, 10, 10, 46
communities 289–94, 290–1 data acquisition 131, 378g
compliance process 345 dating: absolute chronology 112–16, 114,
components 201, 202 375g; chronometric chronology 117–25,
concept of types 195–6 118, 119, 120t, 376g; relative chronology
conchoidal fractures 204, 205, 377g 108–12, 109–10, 112–13, 382g
Conkey, Margaret 321 Daugherty, Richard 161, 224
constraints on behavior 96–8 Deagan, Kathleen 46
context 74, 377g Dean, Jeffrey 254–5
Cook, James 216–17 deep-sea cores 242–4, 243–4
Cooper, Doreen 318 Deetz, James 111, 190
Copán (Honduras) 20, 61, 71, 71, 102, 112, dendrochronology (tree-ring dating)
150–1; and landscape 297; and religion 114–16, 115, 378g; and radiocarbon dating
61, 71, 71, 178–9, 283, 315; and settlement 119–20, 120t; and Southwest US drought
292–3; and spatial data 102 253–6, 254
copper 208, 209, 325, 329 Denmark, Tollund Man 224, 226, 248, 261,
coprolites 94, 145, 217, 224, 260, 261, 311, 374
274, 377g Deschamps, Eliette 42–3
Cortes, Hernán 54, 136, 283, 299, 373 descriptive types 197, 378g
cosmology 91–2 Dethlefsen, Edwin 111
Coso Petroglyphs National Historic Site Diaz, Bernal 20, 306
(California) 341, 342 diet 222–3, 260–4; African American 320;
Cretan civilization see Minoan civilization and animal remains 264–71; and birds/
Crete, Knossos 113, 371 fish/mollusks 275–7; Ötzi the Ice Man 312;
CRM see cultural resource and plant remains 272–5; Sausa people
management (CRM) (Peru) 323
cross-dating 111, 377g diffusionism 23, 378t
cultural anthropology 39, 377g direct historical approach 21–2, 378g
cultural ecology 25 “dirt archaeologists” 222
cultural/noncultural processes 219–20 DNA/genetics 86, 94–5
cultural processes 65–6, 69, 77–8, 87–9, domesticated animals 269
219, 377g Donnan, Christopher 64
cultural resource management (CRM) 40, Dreyer, Günter 207
94, 338–9, 377g; assessment/mitigation/ Duch (Egypt) 181, 369
compliance 344–5; as career 361–2; Dunand, Françoise 181
challenges 349–52; and legislation 339–44; Dust Cave (Alabama) 166, 174, 272, 369
management versus research 345–7; and
Native Americans 352; and recording 159; earthworks, excavation of 176–7, 177
and research design 130, 131; research Easton Down (England) 175–6, 369
strategies 347–9; and sampling surveys ecofacts 73, 378g
147; and site testing 162; and surface ecological/environmental archaeology 87–8;
collection 151 see also “processual plus”
cultural systems approach 60–4, 377g ecological/evolutionary theory
cultural tourism see tourism 26, 27, 95
culture 57–60 ecology 25
culture change 23, 26–7, 57, 64–5, 65, 69; fashion economic development 47–8
and style 72–3; and settlement 283; and ecosystems 60, 378g
species abundance 268; see also culture history edge-wear analysis 206
 Index 389
Egypt (ancient) 2, 11–12, 77, 278, 296; Abu finds see artifacts
Simbel 12, 368; Abydos 207, 368; Avaris Finney, Ben 217
113, 369; and culture change 65–6; and fish 261, 275–6
diffusion of civilization 23; Duch 181, fission track dating 123, 378g
369; and geoarchaeology 256; Giza 33, Flag Fen (England) 169, 369
34, 49, 134, 178, 300, 315, 320, 353, 370; flakes 204, 205
hunter-gatherers 310; Karnak 71, 315, Flannery, Kent 87, 91, 92, 157, 162–3, 285, 334
370; metallurgy 82; Rameses II 311, flotation 274, 378g
314; Rameses III 316; religion 334; state Folsom culture 135, 197, 369
formation 54; trade 327; Tutankhamun’s Ford, John, Cheyenne Autumn 320
tomb 5–6, 5, 217, 218, 223; Valley of the forensic archaeology 307, 379g
Kings 12, 151, 314, 374 Forks National Historical Site (Manitoba) 365
electromagnetic survey 151, 378g Fort Drum (New York) 348
electronic spin resonance (ESR) 122, 378g Fort Mose (Florida) 46, 369
element sampling 147, 378g Fort Robinson (Nebraska) 320
El Niño 240–1, 250–6, 251–2 forts 176–7, 177
El Salvador, Cerén 104, 135, 151–2, 163, 224–5, fossils 9
228, 285, 369 France: Abbeville 9, 368; Abri Pataud 174,
engendering archaeology 321 368; Grotte de Chauvet (France) 42–4, 44,
England: agriculture 239; Avebury 222, 223, 370; Lascaux Cave (France) 33, 38, 135, 371
280, 300; Easton Down 175–6, 369; Flag Fen Frankel, David 287–8
169, 369; Hadrian’s Wall 30, 49, 370; Hoxne Friedel, David 333
137; Maiden Castle 106, 166, 176, 177, 371; Fulani people (West Africa) 327
Somerset Levels 224, 227; Star Carr 25, 197; functional types 198, 198, 379g
Towton 310, 311; Wroxeter 149, 150, 151, fungi 222
294–6, 295, 374; see also Stonehenge
environment, and culture 62 Gaffney, Vincent 149, 151, 294
environmental modeling 68 game animals 268–9
Epidauros (Greece) 49, 49, 354, 369 “garbagology” 48, 233–4
Eridu (Iraq) 289–90, 290, 369 Garnsey (New Mexico) 271, 370
ethics 92, 366 Gatecliff (Nevada) 272
Ethiopia: Bouri 175; Hadar 112, 370 gender 26, 69, 321–4
ethnicity 316–20 general systems theory 87, 96, 379g
ethnic minorities 90 general theoretical frameworks 98
ethnoarchaeology 228, 231–4, 378g genetics/DNA 86, 94–5
ethnographic analogy 228, 378g geoarchaeology 220, 256–7, 379g
“ethnographic present” 229 Geographic Resources Analysis Support
ethnography 39, 277 System (GRASS) 350
Euxine Lake see Black Sea geometric method of site dissection 163–4
Evans, Sir Arthur 113 geomorphology 348
excavation 378g; organization of 168–70; Germany: Hochdorf 318, 370; Leubingen
problems 173–81; reburial/repatriation 63; Neanderthal cave 10; Peissen 355;
182–3; recording 147–9, 158–9, 170, 171; Schoningen 211, 373
and research design 156–61; stratigraphic Gero, Joan 321
observation 170–3, 172; types 161–8 GIS (geographic information systems) 148–9,
exchange see trade/exchange 294–6, 295, 297, 349, 350, 379g
excrement see coprolites Giza (Egypt) 33, 34, 49, 134, 178, 300, 315, 320,
Executive Order 11593 (1972) (US) 343 353, 370; and tourists 353
experimental archaeology 228, 235–6; Lake global warming 242, 250
Titicaca (Bolivia) 48; Pacific navigation goals of archaeology 66–70, 67
216, 217 Göbekli Tepe Carvings (Turkey) 262–3, 262
Ezzo, Joseph 263 gold 208–9
Google Earth (GE) 138, 139
facial reconstructions 307, 308 Gould, Richard 307
features 72, 378g Gould, Stephen J. 46
feces see coprolites GPS (geographic positioning systems) 102,
female see women 137, 148, 170
Ferguson, Leland 319–20 Grasshopper Pueblo (Arizona) 263, 370
fieldwork: experience in 360–1; stages of 134 “gray literature” 351
Figgins, Jesse 135 Great Basin (US) 173, 200, 272, 274, 275
390 Index
Great Drought (Southwest US) 253–6, 254 households 284–9, 286–8, 289, 379g
Great Flood 13–14 Howard, Hildegarde 275
Great Ice Age 241–7, 243–6, 256, 275 Howorth-Nelson (Pennsylvania) 347
Great Serpent Mound (Ohio) 331, 332 Hoxne (England) 137
Great Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe) 18, 18 Huaca de la Luna (Peru) 239–41, 240, 253
Greece (ancient) 36, 42, 145, 329; Epidauros Huaca del Sol (Peru) 252, 252, 370
49, 49, 354, 369; Halieis 145, 370; Olympia Huaca Loro (Peru) 58, 370
16, 24, 372; Sounion 49, 354, 373; see also human diversity 45–6
Cyprus; Minoan civilization; Mycenaean human interactions 69
civilization human progress 22–3
Grotte de Chauvet (France) 42–4, 44, 370 humans: modern 52–3; origin of 8–11, 46,
ground-penetrating radar 295, 379g 50–2, 51t, 52
Guatemala, Tikal 49, 61, 71, 283, 300, 315, 317, hunter-gatherers: Egyptian 310; !Kung
354, 373 San 231–2, 232, 269, 272, 289, 332–3;
Gulf Coast (US) 276 Magdalenian 229–30; rock art 277;
trade and exchange 325; Turkey 263
Hadar (Ethiopia) 112, 370 Huxley, Thomas 10–11
Hadrian’s Wall (England) 30, 49, 370
Halieis (Greece) 145, 370 Ice Age see Great Ice Age
hammerstones 205 ice-core samples 238, 239, 243–4, 244,
Harmon, James 297 249, 252
Harris lines 308, 379g Iceland, Langjokull Ice Cap 238
Hasisadra 13 Ice Man 42, 44, 261, 307, 308, 311–13, 312
Hastorf, Christine 323–4 ideational approaches 60
Haven, Samuel 19 identity 35, 38, 47, 84, 181, 319
Hayden, Brian 232–3 ideology 92
Haynes, C. Vance 140–1 Illinois: Cahokia 151, 369; Koster 159–61, 371
Hedin, Sven 17 Indus civilization (Pakistan) 24, 51t, 54,
Hegmon, Michelle 93–4 175, 176
henges 303; see also Stonehenge; Stones of Industrial Revolution 9
Stenness industries 104, 379g
Herculaneum (Italy) 7, 224, 370 infrared film 142–3
hermeneutics 91, 379g Inka civilization (Peru) 19, 51t, 54, 210, 323,
Hesiod 6 323–4; and Google Earth 138; human
Heyerdahl, Thor 235 sacrifice 239; metallurgy 209, 210
Hidden Cave (Nevada) 274, 370 inorganic/organic materials 222, 379g
Higgs, Eric 293 interpretation 47, 94, 133, 231, 379g; of culture
Higham, Charles 157, 315–16 history 78–86
Hillaire, Christian 42–3 Iran: Ali Kosh 274, 328, 368; Persepolis 353
Hillman, Gordon 26, 250 Iraq 365; Eridu 289–90, 290, 369; Khorsabad
Hissarlik (Turkey) 15, 144, 370 12, 371; Kish 47, 371; Nimrud 12, 13, 372;
historical materialist approaches Nippur 14, 372; Telloh 14, 373; Ur 3–4, 4,
26–7, 88–90 14, 70, 175, 180, 315
historical records 113 Ireland 116, 281–2, 282, 297
history, of archaeology 6–8 Iron Age 8–9, 315, 318
hoards 137, 137 Iron Gates gorges (Romania) 263–4
Hochdorf (Germany) 318, 370 Iroquois Nations 166, 168, 173, 289
Hodder, Ian 89, 98, 351 Ishi (hunter-gatherer) 229
Hogup Cave (Utah) 173, 201, 272, 370 IS militants 365–6
Hohokam (Arizona)/ Hohokam culture 166, isotopic test 264
169, 197, 370, 373 Israel, Qafzeh Cave 180
Holocene 239, 241, 249–50, 348, 379g Italy: Herculaneum 7, 224, 370; Pompeii 128,
Homo floresiensis 188, 189 149, 224, 227, 372
Homo sapiens 52–3
Hopewell (Ohio) 60, 62, 79–81, 81, 181, 341, Jamestown settlement (Virginia) 31–2, 32
370; religious beliefs 330–1 Japan, Jomon tradition (Japan) 206, 370
Hopi Indians 82, 94, 207, 219, 352 Jefferson, Thomas 19
horizons 203, 379g Jinhsa (China) 165
horizontal/vertical excavation 165–8, Joaquin de Alcubierre, Rocque 7
167, 379g Jolly, Kevin 130
 Index 391
Jomon tradition (Japan) 206, 370 Lyell, Sir Charles 9
Jordan: ’Ain Ghazal 330, 331, 368; Petra 327, Lyons, Thomas 139
357, 372
journalism, archaeological 358 McJunkin, George 135
MacNeish, Richard 113
Karnak (Egypt) 71, 315, 370 macrobotanical remains 272, 273, 380g
Keeley, Lawrence 206, 235 Madry, Scott 138
Kelso, William 31–2 Maeshowe (Scotland) 300–1, 302–4, 303, 371
Kennewick Man (Washington) 182, magnetic reversal 242–3, 242
352, 370 magnetometer surveys 151, 152, 295, 380g
Kentucky, Savage Cave 341 Mahendraparvata (Cambodia) 141, 371
Kenya, Koobi Fora 123, 264, 371 Maiden Castle (England) 106, 166, 176,
Kerma (Sudan) 132, 133 177, 371
Khok Phanom Di (Thailand) 157–8, 158 maize 272, 323
Khorsabad (Iraq) 12, 371 Makah Indians see Ozette (Washington)
Khufu 315 malnutrition, effect on bones 308–9, 309
Kidder, Alfred 21–2 Mancos Pueblo (Colorado) 310
Kish (Iraq) 47, 371 Mantaro Valley (Peru) 323–4
Klasies River Cave (South Africa) 166, 175, Manzanilla, Linda 290–1
268, 270–1, 371 Maori war canoe (drawing) 214
Klein, Richard 268, 270–1 Marcus, Joyce 91, 92
Knossos (Crete) 113, 371 Marinatos, Spyridon 124
Koepke, Nikola 307–8 markets 326–7, 380g
Kon-Tiki expedition 235 Marki (Cyprus) 287–9, 288, 371
Koobi Fora (Kenya) 123, 264, 371 Maryland 297–9, 298–9
Kosaku, Hamada 17 Mary Rose 309–11
Koster (Illinois) 159–61, 371 Massachussets, New Salem plantation 319
Kourion (Cyprus) 180, 219, 219–20, 371 Matuyama–Brunhes event 242–3, 242,
kula ring (Melanesia) 326 244, 380g
!Kung San 231–2, 232, 269, 272, 289, 332–3 Mauch, Karl 18
Maya civilization 20–1, 21, 51t, 180; agriculture
Laetoli (Tanzania) 52, 122, 371 272; and aircraft/satellite imagery 138–9;
Lake Titicaca (Bolivia) 47–8 Cerén (El Salvador) 104, 135, 151–2, 163,
La Madeleine (France) 222, 371 224–5, 228, 284–5, 369; metates 232–3, 234;
Landa, Diego de 20 religion 283, 315, 333–4; sacred landscapes
landscape of memory 283, 297, 300, 379g 299; and satellite imagery 151; and social
landscapes 281, 296–9, 379g ranking 315–16, 317; and time 107; see also
Langjokull Ice Cap (Iceland) 238 Copán (Honduras)
Lascaux Cave (France) 33, 38, 135, 371 meaning 90; and landscapes 296, 297
Layard, Austen Henry 12–13, 13 Meer (Belgium) 30, 206, 235, 371
Leakey family 11, 52, 122, 235 megaliths 262–3
Lee, Richard 231 Melanesia 326
legislation 339–44 Mesa Verde (Colorado) 51t, 115, 256, 366, 371
Leone, Mark 297 Mesoamerica 47, 51t, 283, 292, 332, 333,
Lesotho, Tsoelike River rockshelter 277, 374 371; see also individual countries
Leubingen (Germany) 63 Mesopotamia 71, 88, 96, 113; Assyrians
Levi Jordan Plantation (Texas) 318–19 12–14, 13; Sumerians 12–14, 46–7, 50, 54;
Lewis, David 216 Telloh (Iraq) 14, 373; trade 327; Ur (Iraq)
Lewis-Williams, David 277, 332–3 3–4, 4, 14, 70, 175, 180, 315; Uruk 51t
Libby, W. F. 117, 119 metallurgy 81, 82
LIDAR 141–2, 141, 297–8, 299, 380g metals/metallurgy 208–9, 209, 210
linear time 107–8 metates 232–3, 234
linguistic anthropologists 39, 380g Metropolitan Museum of Art 33
Linnaeus, Carolus 188 Mexico: Chichén Itzá 20; Mexico City 136,
lithic analysis 206, 380g 294; Palenque 20, 71, 74, 144, 315, 372; San
Livingstone, David 277 Andrés 272; San José Mogote 289, 333, 372;
Lovelock Cave (Nevada) 261, 371 Uxmal 20, 144, 374; see also Aztecs; Chaco
Lower Verde Valley (Arizona) 346 Canyon; Maya civilization; Tenochtitlán;
Lucretius 7 Teotihuacán; Valley of Oaxaca
luminescence dating 121–2 middle-range theory 200, 215, 226–8, 380g
392 Index
migration 83–5, 380g; Ancestral Pueblo people Neanderthals 51–2, 51t, 86, 121, 122, 310, 372
116, 255–6 Nebraska, Fort Robinson 320
Millon, René 84, 178, 290 Nelson’s Bay (South Africa) 268, 270–1, 372
Minoan civilization (Crete) 51t, 101, 113, 124, neutron activation analysis 207, 208, 329, 380g
124, 371 Nevali Çori (Turkey) 262–3
“missing link” 11 “new” archaeology 89
Mississippian culture 151, 159, 325, 332, 341, New Guinea 327
344, 371; see also Hopewell (Ohio) New Mexico: Garnsey 271, 370; Pecos 21–2,
mitigation 345, 380g 22, 274, 372; Pueblo Bonito 115, 116, 372; San
MNI (minimum number of individuals) 268 Marcos Pueblo 341
Moche civilization 42, 96, 185, 252, 372; New Salem plantation (Massachusetts) 319
burials 223; and climate change 251–3; New York: African American burial ground
human sacrifice 239–41, 240 339–40, 340; Fort Drum 348
Moctezuma, Eduardo Matos 136 Nigeria (Benin) 107, 369
Mohenjodaro (Pakistan) 175, 176 Nimrud (Iraq) 12, 13, 372
Molleson, Theya 321–2 Nineveh 12–13, 215, 372
Moore, Andrew 173 Nineveh (Iraq) 12–13, 215, 372
Morales, Ricardo 240 Nippur (Iraq) 14, 372
Morgan, Jacques de 2 NISP (number of identified specimens) 265
Morgan, Lewis Henry 23 noncultural/cultural processes 219,
Morse, Edward 17 219–20, 380g
Morwood, Michael 188 normative view of culture 78, 380g
Mouhot, Henri 17 Northwest Coast, diet 263
mound sites, excavation of 174–6, 176 number of identified specimens (NISP) 265
Moundville (Alabama) 49, 372 Nunamiut Eskimos (Alaska) 200, 233, 271
Movius, Hallam 174
multidisciplinary perspectives 94 “objects of cultural patrimony” 182
multilinear cultural evolution 88, 380g obsidian 285, 328–9, 328, 380g
Mycenaean civilization (Greece) 15–16, 51t, obsidian hydration 112, 380g
315, 329 Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA) (US) 348–9
Nabonidus 6–7 Ohio: Adena 79, 166, 181, 330, 368;
Nast, Thomas 10 Great Serpent Mound 331, 332; see also
National Archaeological Database 149 Hopewell
National Archaeological Data Base (US) 350 Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania) 11, 70, 107, 217, 222,
National Environmental Protection Act 372; and animal bone 264; discovery of 137;
(NEPA) of 1969 (US) 343 horizontal excavation 166; potassium-argon
National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 dating 122, 123
(US) 343, 345, 349 Olmec culture 51t, 372
National Park Service (US) 350, 351, 362 Olsen-Chubbuck (Colorado) 201, 268, 271, 372
National Register of Historic Places (US) 345 Olympia (Greece) 16, 24, 372
Native American Grave Protection and opal phytoliths 274, 380g
Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) 182, 344, 352 optical stimulated luminescence (OSL)
Native Americans 21–2, 38–9, 46–7, 57, 224, 121–2, 381g
225; Adena (Ohio) 79, 166, 181, 330, 368; oracle bones 17
Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi)45 116, 139, 239, oral history/tradition 37–8, 381g
254–5, 368, 371, 372; and the Antiquities organic/inorganic materials 222, 225, 381g
Act of 1906 (US) 340; Cheyenne 320; Orkney Islands (off northern Scotland) 300–4,
Chumash Indians 276, 283; and CRM 352; 303, 371
Hohokam (Arizona)/ Hohokam culture Ötzi the Ice Man 42, 44, 261, 307, 308,
166, 169, 197, 370, 373; Hopi Indians 82, 311–13, 312
94, 207, 219, 352; Iroquois 166, 168, 289; ownership of the past 34–9
Ozette (Washington) 161–2, 224, 372; and oxygen isotope analysis 313–14
reburial/repatriation 181–2; stone tools Ozette (Washington) 161–2, 224, 372
204; trade 325; see also Hopewell (Ohio);
Nunamiut Eskimos Pääbo, Svaante 86
navigation, Pacific 216–17, 216 Paca, William 297–8, 298–9
Nazca cemetery (Peru) 365 Pakistan: Indus civilization 24, 51t, 54, 175,
Nazis 47 176; Mohenjodaro 175, 176
Neanderthal cave (Germany) 10 Palenque (Mexico) 20, 71, 74, 144, 315, 372
 Index 393
paleoethnobotanists 41, 272, 273, 381g Pueblo Bonito (New Mexico) 115, 116, 372
paleopathology 310, 381g Pulak, Cemal 329
palynology 25, 222, 239, 247–9, 247–8, 256,
274, 381g Qafzeh Cave (Israel) 180
Paracas (Peru) 211–12, 212, 372 qualifications of archaeologists 362–3
Parkington, Sydney 214 Quaternary 241, 382g
passage graves 300–1, 302–4, 303, 371, 381g
patterns of discard 60, 381g
radiocarbon dating 25, 382g
Pecos (New Mexico) 21–2, 22, 274, 372
Rameses II 311, 314
Peissen (Germany) 355
Rameses III 316
Pennsylvania, Howorth-Nelson 347
random sampling 164, 382g
people, required for excavation 169
Rathje, William 48, 233–4
“people without history” 90
reburial/repatriation 182–3
Persepolis (Iran) 353
Recent Africa Origin theory 53
Perthes, Boucher de 9
reciprocity 82, 326, 382g
Peru: Chavín/Chavín de Huantar 83, 84,
recording sites 147–9, 158–9, 170, 171, 350
195, 195, 203, 369; Huaca de la Luna
redistribution 326, 382g
239–41, 240, 253; Huaca del Sol 252, 252,
reductive/subtractive technologies 204, 382g
370; Huaca Loro 58, 370; Mantaro Valley
refitting (retrofitting) 206, 382g
323–4; Nazca cemetery 365; Paracas
Regional Continuity Theory 53
211–12, 212, 372; Sausa people 323–4; Sicán
Register of Professional Archaeologists 350
culture 57–9, 58, 373; see also Inka; Sipán
Reisner, George 132
Petra (Jordan) 327, 357, 372
relative chronology 108–12, 109, 110, 112,
Petrie, Flinders 17, 132
113, 382g
petrological analyses 206, 381g
religion 69, 91–2, 93, 330–5; Maya civilization
phases 201, 202, 381g
283; see also ritual landscape
Philippines, pottery 234
remote sensing 349, 382g; and archaeological
Phoenicians 18
survey 137–43, 141, 143; and
physical anthropology 39, 381g
geoarchaeology 256; and landscapes 297;
Pitt-Rivers, Augustus Lane Fox 24
Stonehenge (England) 152–3
planktonic foraminifera (protozoa) 242
Renaissance 7
plant remains 272–5, 273
Renfrew, Colin 91, 328, 330
Pleistocene 241, 241–2, 244–7, 244–6,
repatriation/reburial 182–3
249, 381g
reports see publication
politics 46–7
research design 87, 129–31, 156–61, 232,
pollen analysis (palynology) 25, 222, 239,
334, 382g
247–9, 247–8, 256, 274, 381g
Reservoir Salvage Act of 1960 (US) 342
Polosmak, Natalya 224
resistivity surveys 151, 382g
polymerase chain reaction (PCR) 86
Richards, Colin 300, 301, 303
Pompeii (Italy) 128, 149, 224, 227, 372
Ring of Brodgar (Scotland) 300, 303, 372
population of settlements 296
ritual landscape 299–304, 301–3
Post, Lennart von 25
rock art 277; Coso Petroglyphs National
postprocessual archaeology 88–90, 94, 381g
Historic Site (California) 341, 342; southern
potassium-argon dating 122–3, 381g
Africa 332–3
pottery: Colono wares 320; Philippines 234;
rockshelters 222; excavation of 173–4, 175;
typology 190–1, 191
Tsoelike River Rockshelter (Lesotho)
prehistory 50–4, 106–7, 381g; chronological
277, 374
methods 114; Magdalenians 29–30
Romania, Iron Gates gorges 263–4
Prescott, William 20
Rosario, Ramon Ramos 233, 234
preservation 220–6, 225, 226
private land, US 341–2, 343
probabilistic sampling 164, 381g sacrifice, human 239–41, 240
processual archaeology see ecological/ safety 348–9
environmental archaeology Sahagun, Bernardino de 332
“processual plus” 93–8 “salvage archaeology” 40
Pryor, Francis 169 sampling 164, 382g; and archaeological
pseudoarchaeology 45 survey 146–7
public archaeology 352–5, 382g; as San Andrés (Mexico) 272
career 361–2 Sanders, William 293–4, 296
publication 133–4, 351–2 San Diego (California) 276
394 Index
San hunter-gatherers 231–2, 232, 272, Smith, William “Strata” 9
289, 332–3 Snaketown (Arizona) 197, 373
San José Mogote (Mexico) 289, 333, 372 social anthropologists 39, 383g
San Marcos Pueblo (New Mexico) 341 social inequality 316–20, 319
Sarzec, Ernest de 14 social organization 69
satellite sensor imagery 138–40, 297, 382g social ranking 290, 315–16
Sausa people (Peru) 323–4 social responsibilities 90
Savage Cave (Kentucky) 341 society 59; and change 69; state/prestate
Sawyer, Gerald 319 324–5, 381g
Schele, Linda 333 soils 220, 222, 256
Schiffer, Michael 219, 220 Somerset Levels (England) 224, 227
Schliemann, Heinrich 15–16, 144 Soren, David 219
Schliemann, Sophia 15 Sounion (Greece) 49, 354, 373
Schmidt, Klaus 262 sourcing see characterization
Schoningen (Germany) 211, 373 South Africa: Klasies River Cave 166, 175, 268,
science, archaeology as 19, 24–5 270–1, 371; Nelson’s Bay 268, 270–1, 372
Scotland: Barnhouse 300–1, 302–4, 302, 371; Southwest United States 73, 143; Black Mesa
Maeshowe (Scotland) 300–1, 302–4, 303, project 346; dendrochronology 114–16, 116;
371; Orkney Islands (off northern Scotland) diet 274, 310; drought 253–6, 254; Mancos
300–4, 303, 371; Ring of Brodgar (Scotland) Pueblo 310; pollen analysis 248; pottery 340,
300, 303, 372; Skara Brae 301, 301, 373g; 344; trade 275; see also Native Americans
Stones of Stenness 300–2, 302, 303, 372 spatial location 102, 171
Section 106 process 345, 382g specialists, excavation 169
sediments 121, 222, 242, 256, 257 spectrographic analysis 328, 383g
seriation techniques 111, 113, 382g Speth, Joe 271
settlement archaeology 282, 382g Spindler, Konrad 312
settlement patterns 102, 281, 283–4, 382g; stable carbon isotope method of dating 263,
communities 289–94, 290–1; households 274, 323
284–9, 286–8; population 297; Wroxeter stakeholders 353, 383g
(England) 294–6, 295 Star Carr (England) 25, 197
Shang civilization (China) 17, 51t, 54, 96, state formation 54
180, 373 State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPOs)
Sheets, Payson 151, 225, 285 (US) 349
shellfish 276–7 Stein, Aurel 17
shell middens 177–8, 178, 275, 276 Stephens, John Lloyd 20–1, 144
shells, and trade 276–7 stewardship 66–8, 365–6, 383g
Shiloh Mound Complex (Tennessee) 159, 160 Stillwater Marsh (Nevada) 373, 374
Shimada, Izumi 58–9 Stone Age 8–9; agriculture 239; animal species
shoulder blades 17 abundance 268; field systems 281; and
shovel pits 163, 382g pollen analysis 249; see also prehistory
Siberia, Ukok Plateau 224 stone circles see Stonehenge; Stones of
Sicán culture (Peru) 57–9, 58, 373 Stenness
sideways looking airborne radar (SLAR) 139 Stonehenge (England) 7, 8, 71, 364, 364, 373;
Silk Route 17 and GIS 149; religion 299; remote sensing
Sipán (Peru) 42, 43, 97, 208–9, 223, 240, 373; 152–3, 152–3; and tourism 33, 354
burials 63–4, 64, 180, 223 Stones of Stenness (Scotland) 300–2, 302,
site catchment analysis 383g; Valley of Oaxaca 303, 372
(Mexico) 293, 293 stone technologies 204–6, 211
sites 200, 382g; accidental discovery of 134–7; stratified sampling 164, 383g
assessment of 150–1; formation process stratigraphic excavation 164–5, 168, 383g
218–20, 221, 256; hierarchy 292, 292; stratigraphic observation 170–3, 172
recording 147–9; research design 156–61, stratigraphy 108–9, 383g
161; subsurface detection methods 151–3; strontium 310–11
types of 70–2; see also excavation Struever, Stuart 159–61
site testing 162–3 stylistic types 198–9, 199, 383g
Skara Brae (Scotland) 301, 301, 373g subassemblages 103–4, 383g
slash-and-burn agriculture 239 subsistence 68, 260, 383g; see also diet
slavery, southern United States 317–20, 319 subsurface (ground-penetrating) radar
Smith, Elliot Grafton 23 151, 383g
Smith, George 13 subtractive/reductive technologies 204, 383g
 Index 395
Sudan, Kerma 132, 133 tourism 31, 33, 48–9, 353–5, 364
Sumerians 12–14, 46–7, 50, 54 Towton (England) 310, 311
superposition, law of 108–10, 110, 383g trace element analysis 264, 329, 384g
surface collection 150–1, 383g trade/exchange 82, 325–30; obsidian
Sykes, Colonel P. M. 353 284, 285, 328; and settlements 283; and
symbols 91 shells 276–7
Syria see Abu Hureyra tradition 203, 384g; cultural 96–7
traditional cultural property 352
taboos 269 treasure hunting 6, 7, 33, 74, 158, 365
Tahiti 86, 216–17, 229, 325 tree-ring dating (dendrochronology) 114–16,
Talepop (California) 276, 373 115; and radiocarbon dating 119–20, 120t;
Tanzania: Laetoli 52, 122, 371; see also and Southwest US drought 253–6, 254
Olduvai Gorge tribes 324, 384g
taphonomy 265, 383g Trigger, Bruce 95, 98
taxonomy 187–90, 383g Troy see Hissarlik (Turkey)
technologies, ancient 203–12 Tsoelike River rockshelter (Lesotho) 277, 374
technology 349 Tucson (Arizona) 233–4
Tehuacán Valley (Mexico) 173, 201, 272, 373; Tung Tso-pin 17
chronology 111, 113, 118 Turkey: Çatalhöyük 284, 289, 328, 369; Göbekli
Telloh (Iraq) 14, 373 Tepe Carvings 262–3, 262; Hissarlik 15, 144,
tells 383g; see also mound sites 370; Nevali Çori 262–3; Uluburun ship 208,
Tennessee, Shiloh Mound Complex 159, 160 209, 329–30, 330, 374
Tenochtitlán (Mexico) 3, 47, 136, 136, 146, Tutankhamun 5–6, 5, 217, 218, 223
327, 373; historical record 307; religion 299; Tylor, Sir Edward 23, 60
settlement 283, 294; trade 307, 327 types 384g; archaeological 191–201, 198; in
Teotihuacán (Mexico) 49, 51t, 84, 85, 107, 134, taxonomy 189–90
145, 315, 373; and excavation of ceremonial typology 190–1, 191, 384g
sites 178–9, 179; human interaction 69;
and landscape 290–1, 291, 296, 299; and Uceda, Santiago 240
tourism 33 Ukok Plateau (Siberia) 224
test pits 162, 384g Uluburun ship (Turkey) 208, 209, 329–30,
Texas, Levi Jordan Plantation 318–19 330, 374
textiles 211–12, 212, 222, 322–3 uniformitarianism 9, 384g
Thailand: Ban Chiang 311; Ban Na Di 315–16, unilinear cultural evolution 23, 384g
369; Khok Phanom Di 157–8, 158 United States 19–20; archaeology legislation
theory, contemporary archaeological 339; Ice Age 245–6, 245–6; Northwest
25–7, 384g Coast 263; see also individual states; Native
thermal infrared multispectral scanning Americans; Southwest United States
(TIMS) 139 units of ordering 201–3, 201
thermoluminescence (TL) 121–2, 384g uranium dating 120, 120t, 122, 123, 384g
Thomas, Cyrus 19 Ur (Iraq) 3–4, 4, 14, 70, 175, 180, 315
Thomas, David 138 Uruk 51t
Thomsen, Christian Jurgensen 8–9, 203 Ussher, Archbishop James 9
Thosarat, Rachanie 315–16 Utah: Danger Cave 173, 369; Hogup Cave 173,
three-age system 8–11, 203, 384g 201, 272, 370
Tierra del Fuego 22, 229, 230 Uxmal (Mexico) 20, 144, 374
Tikal (Guatemala) 49, 61, 71, 283, 300, 315, 317,
354, 373 Valley of the Kings (Egypt) 12, 151, 314, 374
time 105–8; absolute chronology 112–16, 114; Valley of Mexico see Tenochtitlán (Mexico);
chronometric chronology 117–25, 118, 119, Teotihuacán (Mexico)
120t; relative chronology 108–12, 109, 110, Valley of Oaxaca (Mexico) 69, 84, 286, 293,
112, 113 333; communities 289, 290; cosmology/
Tiwanaku (Bolivia) 45, 48, 374 religion 91–2; households 285, 286;
Tollund Man (Denmark) 224, 226, 248, 261, religion 334; San José Mogote (Mexico)
311, 374 289, 333, 372; site catchment analysis
tomb robbers 11–12, 365 293, 293
tools 203, 260, 261; excavation 170; vertical/horizontal excavation 165–8,
obsidian 285 167, 384g
Torrence, Robin 329 villages, excavation of 173, 174
total data stations 167, 384g violence, effect on bone 310
396 Index
Virconium Cornoviorum see Wroxeter women 26, 90, 321–4; African American
Virginia, Colonial Williamsburg 31, 172, 369 pottery makers 319–20; bones of 308, 311;
Vivian, Gwinn 139 Grasshopper Pueblo 263; see also gender
wood technologies 211, 222, 261
Warren, Claude 276 Woolley, Sir Leonard 4
Washington, George 264 Worsaae, Jens Jacob 9
Washington, Ozette 161–2, 224, 372; Wroxeter (England) 149, 150, 151, 294–6,
Kennewick Man 182, 352, 370 295, 374
wealth, and social rank 315 Würm glaciation 246
Webb, Jennifer 287–8 Wye Hall Plantation (Maryland) 297–9, 298–9
Weeks, Ken 151
Wheat, Joe Ben 268, 271 Yellen, John 231–2
Wheeler, Sir Mortimer 24, 106, 167, 176–7, 177 Younger Dryas 249–50
White, Leslie 61
White, Tim 310 Zeder, Melinda 40
Whittle, Alisdair 175–6 ziggurat temple mounds 290, 290
Wilkinson, John Gardiner 12 Zimbabwe, Great Zimbabwe 18, 18
Willey, Gordon 142 zooarchaeology 265–8, 266–7, 384g