Practical Archaeology Contributors
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Practical Archaeology Contributors Brian D. Dillon David M. Van Horn john R. Murray David S. Whitley J. V Linscheid L. Mark Raab Louis J. Tartaglia Melissa C. Winans Ross C. Winans Thomas]. Banks Clement W Meighan ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH TOOLS 2 Practical Archaeology Field and Laboratory Techniques and Archaeological Logistics THIRD EDITION Edited by Brian D. Dillon Institute of Archaeology University of California, Los Angeles 1993 eBook ISBN: 978-1-938770-24-1 Contents Introduction vii Brian D. Dillon Chapter 1 Transit-Controlled Surface Collecting 1 David M. Van Hom and john R. Murray Chapter 2 Practical Mapping for the Field Archaeologist 7 David 5. Whitley Chapter 3 A Method for Effectively Screening Some Clay Matrices 13 David M. Van Horn , john R. Murray , and]. V. Linscheid Chapter 4 Laboratory Automation: Computer-Linked Measurement Devices and Videomicroscopy 19 L. Mark Raab Chapter 5 X Rays in Archaeological Analysis 25 Louis]. I artaglia Chapter 6 Measuring Systems, Techniques, and Equipment for Taphonomic Studies 33 Melissa C. Winans and Ross C. Winans Chapter 7 The Archaeological Field Vehicle 39 Brian D. Dillon Chapter 8 Archaeological Survey Via Muleback 63 Thomas]. Banks and Blian D. Dillon Chapter 9 Small Boats in Archaeological Exploration 69 Clement W. Meighan and Blian D. Dillon Bibliography 83 Introduction Brian D. Dillon ll archaeological writing can be placed in two cate The practical ideas presented herein should help the field gories: that which reports on or interprets archaeo archaeologist to expand data recovery capabilities and to A logical discoveries and that which proposes the make investigation of the past more efficient. Efficiency is ways and means by which new discoveries can be made or again not an end in itself, only the means towards finishing interpreted. Archaeological writing on systems theory, simu archaeological tasks with greater speed, less expenditure of lation, and method (sometimes mislabeled "methodology") funds or energy, and recovery of greater amounts of informa obviously belongs to the second category. Such writing tion. Archaeological efficiency in practical terms therefore usually lacks a sense of practicality, by which l mean the produces a surplus of time, money, and labor over archaeo implementation of a theoty or method in an actual field or logical inefficiency; with this surplus the archaeologist can laboratoty situation. This may be understandable, for only in collect additional evidence or spend additional time on a practical situation can a new idea be evaluated in terms of interpretation, and the size of the data sample and firmness actual archaeological success. Archaeological writing about of the conclusions can be improved. the ways and means of research should be a topical triumvi Much attention is given to the "strategy" of archaeology rate featuring theory, method, and practice. The fo llowing today, by which is meant the grand-scale objectives and papers bear witness to the value of practical considerations potentialities of certain kinds of research; curiously, little is within the field. They are useful and instructive because they heard about archaeological tactics. Practical archaeology address common problems from the world of real archaeol provides a partial solution to this shortcoming. lt takes the ogy and propose real solutions for them that have proven researcher many steps beyond theory, for while theory only successful through trial and error. proposes, practical archaeology disposes. By underlining the Practical archaeology is a means to an end, that end usefulness of "real world" archaeology, one should not being the advance of objective archaeological knowledge. As conclude that all other kinds of archaeology are necessarily such, it stands little danger of becoming an end in itself (as "impractical," only that through application, practical ar have "method" and "theory"), because practical archaeology chaeology can bring us closer to concrete discoveries than is the study of what works in a specific context. lt is in any other form of research. danger, however, of being accorded only parochial impor Each of the following papers is an exercise in practical tance until it can be shown that what can be practiced archaeology because each results from its writer's personal successfully in one archaeological context can also be ap familiarity with real-world archaeological situations. The plied to another one. Specific archaeological goals will differ solutions proposed have been successful in actual applica depending upon geographical location, chronological posi tion. Studies of settlement patterns, for example, are current tion, cultural background, and intellectual focus of the fare for undergraduate instruction in archaeology (and often archaeologist and his or her audience. Nevertheless, mastery within geography departments as well); most good students of practical archaeology becomes the common denominator can rattle off a long list of archaeological site layout charac upon which success of any kind is predicated. Practical teristics and define and contrast "camps," "vi llages," and expertise enables the archaeologist to leap the hurdles that "cities" in artifactually or architecturally quantitative terms, stand between the desire to do archaeology (and the hope of citing nearest-neighbor theory and chi-square diagrams as making important discoveries) and the ability to implement "evidence." If the same student cannot actually make a that desire. planimetric map of an amorphous aggregate of crumbling This volume reports only minimally on archaeological brick walls in the desert or calculate the height and surface results, only because it focuses upon archaeological problem dimensions of a pyramid in the rain forest, it becomes solving in a variety of field and laborato ry research contexts. obvious that a facility with theoretical models is no substi- viii Introduction tute for practical training. The two papers on mapping, by chinery is still beyond the financial means of many archae Van Horn and Murray and by Whitley, help to codify ologists and certainly most students. The X-ray machine, on practical solutions to common recording problems and the other hand, has been with us since 1895. It is commonly provide many useful shortcuts to success in field mapping of available in most large cities in most countries, and a used archaeological sites and in precisely locating artifacts in their one can generally be purchased at fairly low cost. Tartaglia's discovered associations. Such skills are the most basic pre demonstration of some of the archaeological potentials requisites of any kind of spatial analysis of archaeological of X-ray analysis underlines the fact that technology need not remains. be expensive or experimental in order to assist in practical If the precise localization of associated artifacts and archaeological research. This consideration becomes in features is important in mapping, where an essentially two creasingly important to the scholar who cannot bring speci dimensional characterization of reality is produced, it is even mens home for analysis but must study them in their countty more important in excavati on, where three-dimensional of origin. reconstruction becomes necessary. Stratigraphic interpreta The final three papers deal with problems and solutions tion and the understanding of superpositional sequences of a logistical nature that are commonly encountered by field necessitates absolute vertical control as much as horizontal archaeologists. Archaeological logistics have received almost accuracy, and the paper by Winans and Winans provides us no publication exposure, despite the fact that basic problems with an easily constructed apparatus and working method of supply, communication, and transportation beset every by which such goals can be achieved. A lack of facility with field project and perhaps combine to form the most univer taking measurements in field excavations can have disas sal archaeological common denominator. Today, few ar trous results for both archaeology and paleontology. An chaeologists and fewer neophytes can be expected to make apparently disarticulated mammoth in the American Great common sense logistical decisions, for very few have a Basin, for example, has very important implications for the background that includes any practical experience outside question of how the continent was originally populated, and the academic milieu. While most archaeologists dream of we would like to be certain that the transposition of the getting to an untouched archaeological location and making bones is the result of paleo-lndian manipulation rather than startling discoveries, few are willing to begin such a project the result of a field recorder who could not keep a line level unless air passage is available to the point of discovery or a and tape straight. freeway has gone through. The practical archaeologist, how Since the 1940s, chemical and physical testing of ever, knows that solving logistical problems rapidly and archaeological deposits and of artifacts has come to be a efficiently means that four or five research projects can be standard investigative procedure, but most archaeologists completed annually instead of just one, and that more tend to think of such uses of applied science as almost resources can be devoted to archaeology than to archaeologi exclusively laboratory based. Van Horn and Murray's sec cal preparation. Logistical self-sufficiency makes the