Order in the Archaeological Record:

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Order in the Archaeological Record

• Material, Space, and Time in Archaeology

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Material The first frontier

• When we talk about archaeology, we often talk
  about material culture.
• Material culture is all of the physical things
  left behind by past peoples and includes
  --everything from temples to human excrement.

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Artifacts
Portable objects made, modified, or used by
humans
Tools
Manuports
Debris
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• Artifacts make up the bulk of archaeological
  cultural material.
• EX a stone spear tip is an artifact, as is a
  piece of deer bone that has been specifically cut
  and modified so that it can be used to scrape
  hides.
• We can step beneath the level of the artifact and
  talk about their specific attributes.
• Attributes specific, measurable elements, such
  as length, width, or weight, that combine to
  define a specific artifact or feature.
• EX spear point

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• Over the years, archaeologists have noticed that
  some artifacts have very similar attributes.
• In fact, some are so common that they can be
  considered as a group that represents a peoples
  common ideas about the attributes of such
  artifacts.
• Such types can be compared with other clusters,
  and archaeologists can create what we call
  typologies.

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Typology

• Typology a formal description of all the
  attributes that characterize most of the
  artifacts that archaeologists recognize as
  clustering together.
• However, they are problematic
• In defining a given type, archaeologists are
  deciding what attributes are most meaningful and
  which are less so to them.
• Our assumptions may not conform to the intentions
  of the people who make the artifacts, so we
  cannot be sure that out types would be recognized
  as meaningful categories of artifacts by past
  peoples.

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Ecofacts
Unmodified remains of biological materials

• Cultural Origins
• Food Bones
• Corncobs
• Paleofeces

• Noncultural Origins
• Rodent bones
• Insect remains
• Palynology

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• Not all material things carry information about
  the human past were made or modified by humans.
• Material such as pollen, seeds, grasses and
  remains of rodents and even insects can help
  archaeologists reconstruct the past.
• Ecofacts naturally occurring material such as
  pollen and phytoliths that can provide
  information about past human behavior.

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Features
Non-portable constructions that people made for
some purpose

• Dams
• Rock Art
• Earthworks

• Hearths
• Pits
• Roads

Architecture
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• Feature a combination of artifacts and/or
  ecofacts that create a single, definable item,
  such as a fireplace or burial.
• Features often convey a great deal more
  information to archaeologists that do single
  artifacts.
• First, a feature contains several different forms
  of materials
• Second, and more significant, the way the
  features components are assembled to accomplish
  some purpose conveys a tremendous amount of
  information about how past peoples conceived of
  and constructed their world.

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What is Lost

• Not everything made by past peoples survive and
  make it into the archaeological record.
• Softer more perishable subsistence, such as
  cloth, often disintegrates very quickly,
  especially in soils that are particularly acidic.
• Best conditions for preservation
• Very wet
• Very cold

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Tolland Man c. 2000 y.a.
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• Worst conditions those that change
• Hot ? cold
• Wet? dry
• Tropics

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Space The Second Frontier

• It seems obvious to most of us that human beings
  have made different sorts of things in different
  places.
• Archaeology teaches us that things differ across
  time as well.
• During the age of exploration and colonial
  expansion of the 16th-19th centuries, this fact
  was not always so obvious.

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Early Assumptions

• The result of colonial expansion was that
  European scholars organized the material culture
  of the different people they were coming into
  contact with according to their own philosophical
  biases and assumptions of superiority.
• Cultures that were still alive during European
  colonialization (Maya, Aztec, Inka, and others
  were considered somewhat beautiful by nonetheless
  barbaric.
• If, however, the material culture came form
  extinct civilizations, especially those that had
  thrived in areas of current colonial dominance,
  then such material culture was generally revered
  as spectacular and very cultured.

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• EX ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.
• The notion of Diffusionismspread of material or
  ideas from a point of origin into other places.
• Postulated that all civilization developed first
  in ancient Egypt and then moved, or diffused,
  outward.
• Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl sailed across
  the Atlantic to prove it could happen on the Ra
  II.

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Modern Approaches

• In the late 1920s and early 30s people such as
  Alfred Krober and his contemporaries noted that
  people living in similar environments often made
  similar material (and sometime behavioral)
  adaptations to survive in that climate.
• In all, large blocks of space could be defined in
  which similarities and differences in human
  lifeways could be identified and studied.
• While this is problematic and is still open to
  debate, the operation of defining culture areas
  was a key step in refining archaeological
  studies.
• By the mid 1960s the culture area concept was
  being replaced by a smaller unit of study, the
  region.

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• This so-called regional approach, archaeologist
  identify an area that is essentially a discrete
  environment or series of environments.
• They might be river valleys, highlands
  overlooking specific lakes.
• The advantage of this approach is that
  archaeologists could focus their research on a
  relatively small area and therefore better
  identify the resources and challenges that people
  of the past confronted in the region.

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• Other spatial concepts
• Sitesspatially discreet places in which evidence
  for past human activity is found.
• Componentsa single zone within an archaeological
  site that represents the actions of past peoples,
  often presumably with a relatively short span of
  time.
• Site localitya large geographic area, such as a
  valley or gorge, in which may separate sites are
  clustered.

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Time The Third Frontier

• Archaeologists can look at what they find in 2
  ways.
• They can examine materials that are of
  approximately the same age and they can compare
  materials through time.
• The first approach is called synchronic, or
  within time.
• Synchronic- within time or within a limited span
  of time.
• By comparing artifacts are other finds that are
  approximately the same age, archaeologists can
  begin to see the range of technological and
  behavioral variation that existed at that time.
• Different types of artifacts that existed
  thousands of years ago. EX of Chumash beads.

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• Alternatively, we can look at changes across
  time. This is called diachronic- across or
  through time.
• Here, we can study the changes that take place in
  the material culture and behaviors of people over
  extended periods of time.
• Because time is one of the key variables that
  archaeologists look at, they have developed these
  sets of concepts which help them interpret
  temporal sequences within components and across
  sites.
• Archaeologists take advantage of being able to
  see the layering within the earth as they
  excavate therefore, this layering can be used to
  determine that one artifacts is older than
  another artifact in a different level or vice
  versa.
• Law of Superposition

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Time, Space, and Material Culture Intertwined

• As we have just discussed, archaeologists need to
  integrate the three major variables discussed
  thus far material culture, time, and space.
• The Three-Age Approach
• This method was pioneered by C.J. Thomsen which
  linked stone, bronze, and iron material culture
  together in three successive periods. The basic
  concept of the method was adopted throughout much
  of the world.
• Note stages in text page 47

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• The process of naming archaeological materials
  and time-space groupings differs greatly around
  the world.
• One of the few consistent elements in the
  nomenclature systems is a tendency to seek to
  impose a meaningful order on the archaeological
  record.
• This means that naming systems often reflect
  divisions of the archaeological record according
  to the three primary variables, time, space, and
  material culture.
• Moreover, these divisions help archaeologists
  study the past in two different but complementary
  ways, diachronically (or across time) and
  synchronically (within time).

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• All of this brings us back to the earliest naming
  sequences first described last week
• Pecos Classification System- an archaeological
  sequence for the American Southwest proposed by
  A.V. Kidder based on his work at the Pecos Pueblo
  using the direct historical approach.
• Direct historical approach- the tracing of
  cultural material backwards in time from known
  historical points using changes in typologies as
  guides.