Chapter 1 Why This Archaeologist Cares About Geoarchaeology: Some Pasts and Futures of St

2011 WHY THIS ARCHAEOLOGIST CARES ABOUT GEOARCHAEOLOGY 25 CHAPTER 1 WHY THIS ARCHAEOLOGIST CARES ABOUT GEOARCHAEOLOGY: SOME PASTS AND FUTURES OF ST. CATHERINES ISLAND David Hurst Thomas The Fourth Caldwell Conference is all about WHAT IS GEOARCHAEOLOGY, ANYWAY? geoarchaeology, as played out on St. Catherines Island and the Georgia Bight. I have been fortu- In my view, the framework of geoarchaeology nate enough to work on such things for a while was defined byGeoarchaeology: An Internation- and will use this space to reflect, to summarize, al Journal, first published in January 1986. Ac- and to suggest. The first section of this chapter cording to its publication guidelines, this epony- considers the self-definitions of geoarchaeology mous journal would be dedicated to “exploring by several major scholars, some of whom seem to the methodological and theoretical interface be- privilege the present at the expense of forebears. tween archaeology and geology.” To broaden the historical perspective, I sug- How appropriate is it, then, that this pivotal gest that we view “geoarchaeological” thought, paper would be published by Bud Rollins, our at least from a North American perspective, in friend, colleague, and coeditor of this volume terms of three generations. The pioneers relied (Rollins, Richardson, and Sandweiss, 1986)? heavily on the seminal organizing principles of In this ground-breaking paper, “The Birth of geology—the concepts of superposition and in- El Niño”—published in the very first issue of dex fossil. Thomas Jefferson was the first geo- Geoarchaeology—Rollins and his coauthors archaeologist (at least in North America) and I marshaled a variety of evidence from geologi- will argue that such first-generation geoarchaeol- cal, archaeological, and oceanographic sources ogy has dominated archaeological practice until to explore the revolutionary hypothesis that, fairly recently (until perhaps two or three decades about 5000 years ago, a major structural change ago). The second generation of geoarchaeology, took place in the eastern Pacific water mass, my own, spans the late 1970s through the pres- triggering the present-day arid coastal climatic ent. Most of the archaeology of St. Catherines conditions along the northern and central Peru- Island was prosecuted under this paradigm and I vian coastline, forcing coastal foragers to shift believe that we transcended the purely temporal- away from land-based seasonal subsistence in spatial to explore far-reaching objectives, wrap- the grasslands and forests, and instead exploit ping our research in a plethora of new methods the diverse cold water maritime resources that and technologies. The third generation of geoar- now appeared. True to the editorial guidelines chaeology—defined by me, I suppose, as pret- of Geoarchaeology, Rollins and his collabora- ty-much current—has the chance to build upon tors did indeed explore the methodological and this foundation, then scope out the natural and theoretical frontiers to articulate the interface cultural past in unprecedented ways. This chap- between archaeology and geology. ter develops a six-pack of suggestions for those Many others have offered more formalized third-generation geoarchaeologists lucky enough definitions of the field. Karl Butzer (1982: 5) to be working on St. Catherines Island and her penned perhaps the most widely quoted defini- surrounding waters. tion of geoarchaeology as simply “geology that 26 ANTHROPOLOGICAL PAPERS AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY NO. 94 KENTUCKY VIRGINIA N TENNESSEE W E Great Smoky NORTH CAROLINA Mountains NP S Little River Canyon NPRES SOUTH CAROLINA Atlantic Ocean GEORGIA AL SC Hilton Savannah Head I. Tybee I. GA Wassaw I. Ossabaw I. St. Catherines I. Blackbeard I. Gulf of FLORIDA Sapelo Island Mexico Brunswick Little St. Simons I. St. Simons I Jekyll I. Big Cypress NPRES Cumberland I. Biscayne NP FL Amelia I. Dry Tortugas NP Everglades NP 0 100 200 300 Source: ESRI ArcGIS 9.3, US Data KM Fig. 1.1. The location of St. Catherines Island, Georgia. is pursued with an archaeological bias or applica- (3) to reconstruct the landscape that existed tion.” Gifford and Rapp (1985: 15) reversed the around a site or group of sites at the time of oc- focus, viewing geoarchaeology as “archaeology cupation, typically separating the living (bio- pursued with the help of geological methodol- logical realms, plant and animal resources, plant ogy.” Others preferred a more specific agenda, macrofossils, pollen, phytoliths, zooarchaeology, detailing the formalized objectives of geoarchae- and so forth) from the nonliving (the platform on ology (esp. Waters, 1992: 7–13; Renfrew, 1976): which all biological organisms evolved, lived, (1) to place sites and their contexts in a rela- and interacted through time). tive and absolute temporal context through the Rapp and Hill (2006: 1) have more recently application of stratigraphic principles and abso- stressed the importance of multiple viewpoints lute dating techniques (Renfrew, 1976); in geoarchaeology (particularly during the past (2) to understand the natural processes of quarter-century), arguing that the term should site formation (Renfrew, 1976; Schiffer, 1972, “designate a variety of types of research that use 1976, 1987); and geoscience techniques in the evaluation of the 2011 WHY THIS ARCHAEOLOGIST CARES ABOUT GEOARCHAEOLOGY 27 archaeological record.” They also suggest that that—all else being equal—older deposits tend “perhaps [in] its broadest sense … geoarchaeol- to be buried beneath younger ones. Steno also ogy refers to the application of any earth-science conceptualized two other “stratigraphic laws”— concept, technique, or knowledge base to the the law of original horizontality (layers of sedi- study of artifacts and the processes involved in mentary rock are deposited in roughly horizontal the creation of the archaeological record. Geoar- positions) and the law of lateral continuity (lay- chaeology thus becomes ‘the geoscience tradi- ers of sedimentary rock are laterally continuous tion within archaeology ... [that] deals with earth until they intersect the edge of a basin or pinch history within the time frame of human history’ out to zero thickness), both also important to the or that ‘implies archaeological research using deciphering of layers of sediment. Steno’s three the methods and concepts of the earth sciences’” laws of stratigraphy form the foundation of strati- (Rapp and Hill, 2006: 1–2, citing Gladfelter, graphic theory and the interpretation of nearly all 1981; Butzer, 1982). sedimentary layering. For more than four centuries, these canons have facilitated the correlation FIRST GENERATION GEOARCHAEOLOGY: of cliffs, stream valleys, drill cores—and archae- TWO SEMINAL PRINCIPLES ological sites.1 Garrison has observed that geoarchaeology has Thomas Jefferson: Third President evolved primarily as a “method-oriented” enter- and First Geomorphologist? prise—without a general body of theory to govern The overriding concern for early geologists its conduct (2003: 2). I agree with that assessment, like Steno was verticality—how sedimentary but also believe that the practice of geoarchaeol- beds stacked up on one another in their strati- ogy has experienced some significant generational graphic sequences. Thomas Jefferson is not only shifts in objectives and methodology. the father of American archaeology (Thomas, During geoarchaeology’s initial generation— 1979: 25–30, 167), but I would also argue that he which lasted two centuries—archaeologists was likewise the first geoarchaeologist (at least found the discipline of geology to be a produc- in the Americas; see Wheeler, 1954: 58; Thomas, tive mine of assumptions, techniques, and even 2005). Jefferson’s firsthand excavations and ob- some important theory. It was geologists, after servations on a mound (or barrow), located along all, who first pulled together the two major prin- the Rivenna River near Charlottesville (Virginia), ciples of stratigraphy—the paired concepts of enabled the third American president to recon- superposition and index fossils that have been struct the various mound construction stages and critical in our understanding of how the archaeo- to suggest its probable use as a burial feature— logical record is put together (Thomas, 1998b: all based on his innovative application of basic 205–206, 224–227; Kelly and Thomas, 2010: stratigraphic principles.2 102–103, 125). Thanks to his geological forebears, Jefferson Perhaps more to the point, these two geologi- got it right. And, as it turns out, stratigraphic tech- cal principles have guided our long-term investi- niques for analyzing archaeological and geologi- gation of the human presence on St. Catherines cal sites have changed very little since his day. Island. Let us pause a moment, then, to review The technology is, of course, vastly improved, this initial contribution and to see how first gen- but the bedrock philosophy that guided Thomas eration geoarchaeology has been invaluable to St. Jefferson is basically unchanged, as our own ex- Catherines Island archaeology. cavations at McLeod Mound amply illustrate. Early Geoarchaeology on St. Cath- Steno’s Law of Superposition erines Island: Not long after I began doing The law of superposition, initially formulated archaeology on St. Catherines Island, Mr. John by Nicolaus Steno in the mid-17th century, would Toby Woods (then island superintendent) showed seem to be geology’s most important principle. us a seven-mound mortuary complex centered on Steno’s law,

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