Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology - Böcker

Students of human behavior have always been interested in the relationship between human populations and their environment. Decades of research not only have illuminated the backdrop against which culture is viewed, but have identi­ fied many of the conditions that influence or promote technological develop­ ment, social transformation, and economic reorganization. It has become in­ creaSingly evident, however, that if we are to explore more forcefully the linkages between culture and environment, a processual orientation is required. This is found in human ecology-the study of the relationship between people and the ecosystem of which they are a part. This book is a collection of papers about the recent and distant past by scientists and humanists involved in the study of human ecology in northeastern North America. The authors critically examine the systemic interface between people and their environment first by identifying the indicators of that rela­ tionship (e.g., historical documentation, archaeological site patterning, faunal remains), then by defining the processes by which change in one part of the ecosystem affects other parts (e.g., by conSidering how an ecotonal gradient affects biotic communities over time), and finally by explicating the behavioral implications thereof.

Investigations of archaeological intrasite spatial patterns have generally taken one of two directions: studies that introduced and explored methods for the analysis of archaeological spatial patterns or those that described and analyzed the for­ mation of spatial patterns in actuaiistic-ethnographic, experimental, or natu­ ral-contexts. The archaeological studies were largely quantitative in nature, concerned with the recognition and definition of patterns; the actualistic efforts were often oriented more toward interpretation, dealing with how patterns formed and what they meant. Our research group on archaeological spatial analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been working for several years on both quantitative and interpretive problems. Both lines of investigation are closely related and are important complements. In order to demonstrate the convergence of archaeological and actualistic studies for the understanding of intrasite spatial patterns, we organized a sympo­ sium at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archaeology in Toronto, Canada, in May 1987. The symposium, titled "The Interpretation of Stone Age Archaeological Spatial Patterns," was organized into two sessions. The six papers presented in the morning session, five of which comprise Part I of this volume, focused on ethnoarchaeological and experimental research. Michael Schiffer was the discussant for this half of the symposium. Our intention for the ethnoarchaeological contributions to the symposium and volume was the delin­ eation of some of the significant accomplishments achieved thus far by actualistic studies regarding the formation of spatial patterns.

Archaeological research on interregional interaction processes has recently reasserted itself after a long hiatus following the eclipse of diffusion studies. This "rebirth" was marked not only by a sudden increase in publications that were focused on interac­ tion questions, but also by a diversity of perspectives on past contacts. To perdurable interests in warfare were added trade studies by the late 196Os. These viewpoints, in turn, were rapidly joined in the late 1970s by a wide range of intellectual schemes stimulated by developments in French Marxism (referred to in various ways; termed political ideology here) and sociology (Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems model). Researchers ascribing to the aforementioned intellectual frameworks were united in their dissatisfaction with attempts to explain sociopolitical change that treated in­ dividual cultures or societies as isolated entities. Only by reconstructing the complex intersocietal networks in which polities were integrated-the natures of these ties, who mediated the connections, and the political, economic, and ideological significance of the goods and ideas that moved along them-could adequate ex­ planations of sociopolitical shifts be formulated. Archaeologists seemed to be re­ discovering in the late twentieth century the importance of interregional contacts in processes of sociopolitical change. The diversity of perspectives that resulted seemed to be symptomatic of both an uncertainty of how best to approach this topic and the importance archaeologists attributed to it.

There are many ways to study pots or the sherds of pots. In this book James Skibo has focused on the surface wear and tear found on the resin-coated, low-fired cooking pots of the Kalinga people in north­ western Luzon. This detailed analysis is part of a much larger evalua­ tion of Kalinga pottery production and use by the staff members and students at the University of Arizona that has been underway since 1972. Here he has analyzed the variants among the possible residual clues on pots that have endured the stresses of having been used for cooking meat and vegetables or rice; standing on supports in the hearth fire; wall scrapings while distributing the food; being transported to the water source for thorough washing and scrubbing; followed by storage until needed again-a repetitive pattern of use. This well-controlled study made use of new pots provided for cooking purposes to one Kalinga household, as well as those pots carefully observed in other households-- 189 pots in all. Such an ethnoarchaeological approach is not unlike follOwing the course of the firing of a kiln-load of pots in other cultures, and then purchasing the entire product of this firing for analysis. Other important aspects of this Kalinga study are the chemical analysis of extracts from the ware to deduce the nature of the food cooked in them, and the experimental study of soot deposited on cooking vessels when they are in use.

The last 20 years have witnessed a proliferation of new approaches in archaeolog­ ical data recovery, analysis, and theory building that incorporate both new forms of information and new methods for investigating them. The growing importance of survey has meant an expansion of the spatial realm of traditional archaeological data recovery and analysis from its traditional focus on specific locations on the landscape-archaeological sites-to the incorporation of data both on-site and off-site from across extensive regions. Evolving survey methods have led to experiments with nonsite and distributional data recovery as well as the critical evaluation of the definition and role of archaeological sites in data recovery and analysis. In both survey and excavation, the geomorphological analysis of land­ scapes has become increasingly important in the analysis of archaeological ma­ terials. Ethnoarchaeology-the use of ethnography to sharpen archaeological understanding of cultural and natural formation processes-has concentrated study on the formation processes underlying the content and structure of archae­ ological deposits. These actualistic studies consider patterns of deposition at the site level and the material results of human organization at the regional scale. Ethnoarchaeological approaches have also affected research in theoretical ways by expanding investigation into the nature and organization of systems of land use per se, thus providing direction for further study of the material results of those systems.

Incorporating both archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence, this volume reexamines the role played by native peoples in structuring interaction with Europeans. The more complete historical picture presented will be of interest to scholars and students of archaeology, anthropology, and history.

Regional approaches to the study of prehistoric exchange have generated much new knowledge about intergroup and regional interaction. The American South­ west and Mesoamerica: Systems of Prehistoric Exchange is the first of two volumes that seek to provide current information regarding regional exchange on a conti­ nental basis. From a theoretical perspective, these volumes provide important data for the comparative analysis of regional systems relative to sociopolitical organization from simple hunter-gatherers to those of complex sociopolitical entities like the state. Although individual regional exchange systems are unique for each region and time period, general patterns emerge relative to sOciopolitical organization. Of significant interest to us are the dynamic processes of change, stability, rate of growth, and collapse of regional exchange systems relative to sociopolitical complexity. These volumes provide basic data to further our under­ standing of prehistoric exchange systems. The volume presents our current state of knowledge about regional exchange systems in the American Southwest and Mesoamerica. Each chapter synthesizes the research findings of a number of other researchers in order to provide a synchronic view of regional interaction for a specific chronological period. A diachronic view is also prOvided for regional interaction in the context of the developments in regional SOciopolitical organization. Most authors go beyond description by proposing alternative models within which to understand regional interaction. The book is organized by geographical and chronological divisions to pro­ vide units of the broader mosaic of prehistoric exchange systems.

Offers Soviet-American comparative research on the Pleistocene hunter-gatherer groups who inhabited North America, Russia, and Ukraine. This work is intended for archaeologists of all nations to set an agenda for future research.

Based on detailed excavation data, the author reconstructs the paleography of the Santa Barbara coast ca. 8500 years ago, makes comparisons to other early California sites, and applies his findings to current theories of hunter-gatherers and coastal environments. With an emphasis on paleographic reconstructions, site formation processes, chronological studies, and integrated faunal analyses, the work will be of interest to a wide range of scholars working in shell middens, hunter-gatherer ecology, geoarchaeology, and coatal or aquatic adaptations.

The author presents a large comparative database derived from ethnographic and architectural research in Southeast Asia, Egypt, Mesoamerica, and other areas; proposes new methodologies for comparative analyses of houses; and critically examines existing methodologies, theories, and data. His work expands on and systematizes comparative and cross-cultural approaches to the study of households and their environments to provide a firm foundation for this emerging line of study.

Historical archaeologists often become so involved in their potsherd patterns they seldom have time or energy left to address the broader processes responsi­ ble for the material culture patterns they recognize. Some ofus haveurged our colleagues to use the historical record as a springboard from which to launch hypotheses with which to better understand the behavioral and cultural pro­ cesses responsible for the archaeological record. Toooften, this urging has re­ sulted in reports designed like a sandwich, having a slice of "historical back­ ground," followed by a totally different "archaeological record," and closed with a weevil-ridden slice of "interpretation" of questionable nutritive value for understanding the past. The reader is often left to wonder what the archae­ ological meat had to do with either slice of bread, since the connection be­ tween the documented history and the material culture is left to the reader's imagination, and the connection between the interpretation and the other disparate parts is tenuous at best. The plethora of stale archaeological sandwiches in the literature has re­ sulted at the methodological level from a too-narrow focus on the specific history and archaeology ofa site and the individuals involvedon it, rather than a focus on the explanation of broader processes of culture to which the actors and events at the site-specific level responded.

This volume is based on the Field Museum of Natural History Spring System­ atics Symposium held in Chicago on May 11, 1991. The financial support of Ray and Jean Auel and of the Field Museum is gratefully acknowledged. When we teach or write, we present only those elements that support our arguments. We avoid all weak points of our debate and all the uncer­ tainties of our models. Thus, we offer hypotheses as facts. Multiauthored books like ours, which simultaneously advocate and question diverse views, avoid the pitfalls and lessen the impact of indoctrination. In this volume we analyze the anthropological and biological disagreements and the positions taken on the origins of modern humans, point out difficultieswith the inter­ pretations, and suggest that the concept of the human origin can be explained only when we first attempt to define Homo sapiens sapiens. One of the major controversies in physical anthropology concerns the geographic origin of anatomically modern humans. It is undisputed, due to the extensive research of the Leakeys and their colleagues, that the family Hominidae originated in Africa, but the geographic origin of Homo sapiens sapiens is less concretely accepted. Two schools of thought existon this topic.

In this unique volume, archaeologists examine the changing economic structure of trade in North America over a period of 6,000 years. Organined by geographical and chronological divisions, each chapter focuses on trade in one of nine regions from the Arachiac through the late prehistoric period. Each contribution explores neighboring areas to llustrate the complexity of North American exchange. By charting the econmic structure of these regions, archaeologists, economic anthropologists, and economic geographers gain greater insight into the dynamics of North American trade and exchange on a continental wide basis.

Style, Society, and Person integrates the diverse current and past understandings of the causes of style in material culture. It comprehensively surveys the many factors that cause style; reviews theories that address these factors; builds and tests a unifying framework for integrating the theories; and illustrates the framework with detailed analyses of archaeological and ethnographic data ranging from simple to complex societies. Archaeologists, sociocultural anthropologists, and educators will appreciate the unique unifying approach this book takes to developing style theory.

In this volume, archaeologists offer a new direction for burial research by expanding the models for mortuary analysis from a site-specific to a regional level. Contributors explore how regional mortuary approaches allow the introduction of new questions about peer polity interactions and regional alliances-extending traditional settlement system and exchange analyses. This volume features case studies examining mortuary sites as components of the archaeological landscape.

Chesapeake Prehistory is the first book in almost a century to synthesize the archaeological record of the region offering new interpretations of prehistoric lifeways. This up-to-date work presents a new type of regional archaeology that explores contemporary ideas about the nature of the past. In addition, the volume examines prehistoric culture and history of the entire region and includes supporting lists of radiocarbon assays. A unique feature is a reconstruction of the dramatic transformation of the regional landscape over the past 10-15,000 years.

Offering the most comprehensive study of southern Jordan, this illuminating account presents detailed data from over a hundred archaeological sites stretching from the Lower Paleotlithic to the Chalcolithic periods. The author uses archaeological and paleoenvironmental evidence to reconstruct synchronic and evolutionary aspects of the cultural ecology of the prehistoric inhabitants of southern Jordan. This study exemplifies that cultural historic and processual approaches are integral to examining prehistoric cultural ecology. Numerous artifact illustrations as well as tables and appendixes containing primary data are included.

Humans at the End of the Ice Age chronicles and explores the significance of the variety of cultural responses to the global environmental changes at the last glacial-interglacial boundary. Contributions address the nature and consequences of the global climate changes accompanying the end of the Pleistocene epoch-detailing the nature, speed, and magnitude of the human adaptations that culminated in the development of food production in many parts of the world. The text is aided by vital maps, chronological tables, and charts.

Lithic analysts have been criticized for being atheoretical in their approach, or at least for not contributing to building archaeological theory. This volume redresses that balance. In Stone Tools, renowned lithic analysts employ explicitly theoretical constructs to explore the archaeological record and use the lithic database to establish its points. Chapters discuss curation, design theory, replacement of stone with metal, piece refitting, and projectile point style.

, produced evidence for the oldest burning of coal for fuel, while more recently the New York Times informed us that imprints in clay at Pavlov I attest to the oldest evidence for the making and use of textiles.

John M. O'Shea explores this question by employing modern archaeological theory and analysis as well as mortuary theory to build a model of an Early Bronze Age society in the eastern Carpathian Basin. He focuses on the Maros communities and utilizes the densely encoded social information from their cemeteries to draw a picture of the Maros' social systems.

Just over 20 years ago the publication of two books indicated the reemergence of Darwinian ideas on the public stage. E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis and Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, spelt out and developed the implications of ideas that had been quietly revolutionizing biology for some time. Most controversial of all, needless to say, was the suggestion that such ideas had implications for human behavior in general and social behavior in particular. Nowhere was the outcry greater than in the field of anthropology, for anthropologists saw themselves as the witnesses and defenders of human di­ versity and plasticity in the face of what they regarded as a biological determin­ ism supporting a right-wing racist and sexist political agenda. Indeed, how could a discipline inheriting the social and cultural determinisms of Boas, Whorf, and Durkheim do anything else? Life for those who ventured to chal­ lenge this orthodoxy was not always easy. In the mid-l990s such views are still widely held and these two strands of anthropology have tended to go their own way, happily not talking to one another. Nevertheless, in the intervening years Darwinian ideas have gradually begun to encroach on the cultural landscape in variety of ways, and topics that had not been linked together since the mid-19th century have once again come to be seen as connected. Modern genetics turns out to be of great sig­ nificance in understanding the history of humanity.

This book is written from a particular theoretical and practical postnon. The first chapter outlines some of these issues, but a few issues requireemphasis. The first is what is meant by "political economy. " The concept of political econ- omy used here derives from common economic and social science usage. Sometimes, however, a few individuals seem to consider political economy to consist only of power relationships, especially in regard to distribution and consumption, often excluding or ignoring social reproduction or production. Although power and its uses are important issues, this is a very incomplete view of political economy from my perspective, one that ignores arguably eentral issues. Another issue is that of historieal eomparisons. Some of the ehapters that follow have mueh historieal data. The historical eomparisons are not the point of this volume, however. Testing of historieal "models" is important, but the reader should not be distraeted by them. I have long preaehed against misuse of historieal analogy.I do argue that the historie and prehistorie Southeastem societies have been misunderstood so as to make an artifieial gap between them, but this is a seeondary issue. In any ease, the thesis of similarity is being tested against empirieal evidenee. The historieal data are absolutely not being used to interpret the prehistorie data.

This book is written from a particular theoretical and practical postnon. The first chapter outlines some of these issues, but a few issues requireemphasis. The first is what is meant by "political economy. " The concept of political econ- omy used here derives from common economic and social science usage. Sometimes, however, a few individuals seem to consider political economy to consist only of power relationships, especially in regard to distribution and consumption, often excluding or ignoring social reproduction or production. Although power and its uses are important issues, this is a very incomplete view of political economy from my perspective, one that ignores arguably eentral issues. Another issue is that of historieal eomparisons. Some of the ehapters that follow have mueh historieal data. The historical eomparisons are not the point of this volume, however. Testing of historieal "models" is important, but the reader should not be distraeted by them. I have long preaehed against misuse of historieal analogy.I do argue that the historie and prehistorie Southeastem societies have been misunderstood so as to make an artifieial gap between them, but this is a seeondary issue. In any ease, the thesis of similarity is being tested against empirieal evidenee. The historieal data are absolutely not being used to interpret the prehistorie data.

This wide-ranging volume brings together the results of global research on weapon technology, hunting strategies, and technological organization spanning the Middle Paleolithic through the ethnographic present, and the geographical breadth of the five inhabited continents. Integrating archaeological, experimental, and ethnoarchaeological perspectives, the book paints a vibrant picture of the technological know-how, decision-making processes, and organizational logistics associated with hunters armed with spears or arrows. Unlike most works on archaeological subjects, the findings presented here are bound to neither time nor place, but are applicable in any context in which spears, bows, and/or arrows are in use.

As an archaeologist with primary research and training experience in North American arid lands, I have always found the European Stone Age remote and impenetrable. My initial introduction, during a survey course on world prehis­ tory, established that (for me, at least) it consisted of more cultures, dates, and named tool types than any undergraduate ought to have to remember. I did not know much, but I knew there were better things I could be doing on a Saturday night. In any event, after that I never seriously entertained any notion of pur­ suing research on Stone Age Europe-that course was enough for me. That's a pity, too, because Paleolithic Europe-especially in the late Pleistocene and early Holocene-was the scene of revolutionary human adaptive change. Iron­ ically, all of it was amenable to investigation using precisely the same models and analytical tools I ended up spending the better part of two decades applying in the Great Basin of western North America. Back then, of course, few were thinking about the late Paleolithic or Me­ solithic in such terms. Typology, classification, and chronology were the order of the day, as the text for my undergraduate course reflected. Jochim evidently bridled less than I at the task of mastering these chronotaxonomic mysteries, yet he was keenly aware of their limitations-in particular, their silence on how individual assemblages might be connected as part of larger regional subsis­ tence-settlement systems.

The volume summarizes the results of interdisciplinary archaeological investigations at Aetokremnos which present the earliest well-supported evidence of humans in Cyprus and demonstrate the association of cultural remains with extinct endemic Pleistocene fauna. Alan Simmons shows that Aetokremnos is one of the few archaeological sites where a convincing argument can be made for human involvement in Pleistocene extinctions. Highlights of Faunal Extinction in an Island Society are chapters that + place the Aetokremnos site within a broader context + include specialist's reports that demonstrating the need for interdisciplinary contributions + describe the chipped stone assemblage of a new culture + delineate the huge faunal assemblage recovered, and + detail how the site was dated. Given the controversial nature of the subject matter, the volume will appeal to a wide readership including nonanthropological archaeologists trained in anthropological methods.Researchers and students who specialize in the Mediterranean and Near East as well as scholars interested in island colonization and adaptations, method and theory, Pleistocene extinctions, and interdisciplinary applications will all find much of value in this excellent text.

Drawing data from a classic region for Palaeolithic research in Europe, this book explores how early humans obtained lithic raw materials and analyzes the different utilization patterns for locally available materials compared with those from a greater distance. The author locates these patterns within an ecological context and argues that early modern humans selected specific mobility strategies to accommodate changes in subsistence environments.