Diagnostics, Stratification and Zeppelin

Just a bit of a restatement or expansion of Mike's question and my response from class today.

The survey project I described used diagnostic pottery and projectile points to place the sites in the region into a basic temporal sequence.  What inferences was this based on?  Well, bear with my analogy again...

Holistic Connections

This post primarily stems from Friday's discussion in the Archaeology course, but it's relevant for the Cultural one as well.

Early Immigrants and the Politics of Archaeology

For the past century, one of the most fascinating questions in archaeology, especially American archaeology, has been that surrounding the first human migrations into North and South America.  For most of the last half of the 20th Century, most archaeologists agreed that the first settlement happened around 12,000 years ago and that the first residents were the Clovis culture, distinctive by their fluted spear points.  During the past 30 years, however, that model has come under sustained attack by new data.  The archaeological consensus has now shifted to an earlier occupation of the hemisphere and that the Clovis people were not first and not alone.

Old Fire

Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa

Thanks to Molly for the initial heads up on this.  News in the archaeological world is all about a site in South Africa that seems to show convincing evidence for the use of fire by about one million years ago.  This is about 300,000 years earlier than we had discussed in the archaeology class.  As the linked article describes, the antiquity of the use of fire illustrates even more the long history of biological and cultural change that has characterized the story of our species.

Levels of Archaeological Theory

I made this point in class quickly, so I think it bears repeating.  In archaeology, one can conceive of at least three levels of archaeological theory (and these three levels weave into the three goals of archaeology we've talked about many times--culture history, reconstructing activities, explaining social change).

Put as simply as I can, theory refers to an interrelated set of models (which are themselves composed of hypotheses) that together form a coherent, relatively concise explanation for some phenomenon.  It is not a "hunch" or a "guess."

The first level of theory in archaeology focuses on establishing culture history, or arranging material culture in time and space. This is relatively "basic" theory in that it often relies on fairly straightforward principles like the law of association and superposition.

The second level of theory is sometimes called middle-range theory. I didn't use this term in class, but you should already be familiar with the concept.  Middle-range theory includes all those models and hypotheses used to reconstruct ancient human activities from the static remains of the archaeological record.  I've expanded further on the idea of middle range theory here...though I don't use the term "middle range."

The third (or, top?) level of theory is what we've recently been talking about in our discussion for models of the origins of the Neolithic. This sort of theory can be thought of as anthropological or sociological theory.  Theories that attempt to provide a guiding, consistent explanation for human behavior.  Different theoretical approaches, however, consider different variables as more important than others.  In this sense then, this level of archaeology theory is no different than what is used in sociology or cultural anthropology. 

Processual archaeology offers explanations based on variables like population density and environmental change.  Processualists see human society and culture as ultimately adaptive in nature.  Subsequently, processualists emphasize objective data, such as those that can indicate human population or subsistence.

Postprocessual archaeology, on the other hand, believe that only seeing human society as adaptive misses a major point about the human experience. They wold claim that humans are social and symbolic creatures, and so accordingly live in worlds differently mediated by meaning and are in dynamic social relationships with other humans.  For postprocessualism, to understand ancient humans, we need to take such considerations into account.  However, getting at symbols and social dynamics can be more difficult than getting at subsistence.  Because of this, postprocessualists are often less reliant on strictly objective data and rely on more holistic interpretations that look at entire assemblages of artifacts, trying to piece together an ancient big picture that may be very foreign to modern eyes (wow, that's a confusing sentence).

Despite this being the longest post on this blog to date, I've simplified this discussion tremendously.  However, theory is a critical aspect of any scientific endeavor and so, it's important to have some understanding of it to really get a handle on any scientific field. Also, it's just cool stuff to think about.  Thinking back to what got me hooked on anthropology, I'm pretty sure theoretical discussions are to blame.

Domestication and Food Production

I don't think I emphasized enough today the connection between food production and domesticated products.

All of the socio-cultural consequences I spent the last couple of classes going over only really became manifest when certain species went through the process of domestication. Humans and domesticated species became entangled in mutually dependent relationships that allowed for the remarkable expansion of both.

The addition of these modified species to the subsistence base of human groups changed up those groups' environments in dramatic ways. Now, their subsistence context included species that were manageable whose production could be relatively easily increased. For the most part, food production almost always involves the participation of domesticated species.

Behold My Rachis

Just another reason the development of the Neolithic is anthropologically important.

Archaeological Politics

Today, we made our first foray into the archaeology of North and South America, which we'll be spending a lot of time in for the rest of the semester.  While the histories of residents of the Americas is fascinating, the study of the remains of those peoples brings up interesting conflicts between the archaeologists who have conducted research and the descendent communities (living Native Americans) that still have a stake in what happens to the remains of their ancestors.

The relationship between archaeologists and Native Americans has definitely not always been a friendly one. Throughout the rest of the semester, I'll do my best to bring these controversies to light, beginning on Friday with the infamous case of Kennewick Man.

Behavioral Modernity

Just a couple of things I'd like to emphasize from last couple of days' discussion. The term behavioral modernity is important because it transparently states that the peoples alive during the times were behaving in ways very similar to how contemporary humans do.  While most humans alive today aren't making their livings through hunting and gathering, humans today do get a lot of resources out of their environment, live in spatially structured settlements, and use symbols to communicate about lots of things, including social information.  This includes communicating senses of identity--who am I, who do I identify with and who do I consider different from me. The specific answers to those questions will differ greatly between you and an Upper Paleolithic person, but you're asking the same questions.

Another quick point. Most of my illustrations come from the European Upper Paleolithic, but most of the developments associated with Behavioral Modernity appeared in Africa first, sometimes tens of thousands of years earlier.  As we'll get into on Monday, I think it's because the demographic context of humans first shifted in Africa, requiring some of the changes we've been talking about.

Archaeological Inference Papers

All in all, I was pleased with the quality of the papers the class submitted yesterday.  While your well-done papers shows that many of you already "get" this, I just want to reiterate how central inference is to the archaeological process. As noted in the Torso and Oblong blog

For archaeological theory, one of the most important processes is the transformation of a living society into the remains that archaeologists encounter. Archaeologists must theoretically account for this in any inference that reconstructs some ancient behavior based on the static material remains of the present. Like other social scientists, archaeologists are interested in describing, understanding and sometimes explaining what human beings do. Like other social scientists, they seek to document the dynamic interplay of groups and individuals within their societal context.

Unluckily for archaeologists, they cannot actually observe people do what they do; even if that is what they want to study. By the very nature of the discipline, archaeologists are often left without living informants to tell them anything about how their particular society worked. Luckily for archaeologists, people have almost always lived in a sea of material culture. Projectile points, pots, wheels, masks, houses, temples, malls and iPads are just some of the almost infinite variety of material culture that makes human life as we know it possible. So, it is material culture that provides us our window onto the past dynamics of an ancient society--much of it remains after its makers and users are dead.

The papers you just handed in were your first forays into that intellectual process. Overall, nice job.

Archaeology vs. "American Digger"

This topic would have been more appropriate a few weeks ago when we were discussing archaeological method and theory, but beggars can't be choosers.  In a few weeks, the paragon of educational and intellectual television, Spike TV, will be broadcasting their new show, American Digger.   In this show, a former professional wrestler will

scour target-rich areas, such as battlefields and historic sites, in hopes of striking it rich by unearthing and selling rare pieces of American history. In the US, there are millions of historical relics buried in backyards just waiting to be discovered and turned into profit [Spike TV press release]

I hope all of the students in the Archaeology and Prehistory class can already see what's wrong with  this show just in that short description.  Such a show runs counter to most of the deeply held ethical principles of archaeology.  As discussed in class, at its core, archaeology is about learning more about the pasts of specific peoples as well as our collective humanity.  The archaeological record is an irreplaceable resource to do that. And, the archaeological record is more than just a collection of artifacts. It's a record of spatial relationships among features and artifacts that give us insight into the social organization of past peoples.

Looting artifacts to make a quick buck robs descendant communities and all of us of our past.

Human Ancestries: The Place of Neandertals and Denisovans

Today's lecture covered an important and newly developing picture of human history. As noted, humans seem to have always interbred with neighboring groups and there never seem to have been distinct biological "races" as they have been understood in the last couple centuries of American history. For any of those interested, here's a couple of blog posts that influenced my coverage in class today (Living Anthropologically's Admixture All the Way Down and Torso and Oblong's Talking About Ancient and Modern Peoples).

On a related note, since we're talking about breeding between different populations, I wanted to remind you what anthropologists believe that Neandertals looked like.  Not like an ape or other kind of bestial monstrosity, but a lot like you and me.