Chapter 2—Putting the Picture Together

CHAPTER OUTLINE Origins of Archaeology Archaeology in the World: Thomas Jefferson, the Archaeologist The Emergence of Archaeology Organizing Time The Establishment of Human Antiquity Imperial Archaeology Developing Method and Theory Stratigraphic Method and Culture History V. Gordon Childe Archaeology as Science Developing Scientific Methods The New Archaeology Systems Theory Cultural Resource Management Toolbox: Faunal Analysis and Taphonomy Alternative Perspectives Postprocessual Archaeology Gender and Agency Toolbox: Archaeoacoustics From the Field: Why Do I “Do” Archaeology? Evolutionary Archaeology Archaeology at the Trowel’s Edge

LEARNING OBJECTIVES  Delineate the process by which the depth of human antiquity was recognized.  Understand the development of an explicitly scientific approach to archaeology by the “New Archaeologists,” also known as processual archaeologists.

KEY TERMS AND CONCEPTS Agency Theory: a theory that emphasizes the interaction between the agency of individuals and social structure. Archaeological Theory: ideas that archaeologists have developed about the past and about the ways we come to know about the past. Deduction: drawing particular inferences from general laws and models. Emic: an approach to archaeological or anthropological analysis that attempts to understand the meanings people attach to their actions and culture. Etic: an approach to archaeological or anthropological analysis that does not attempt to adopt the perspective of the members of the culture that are being studied. Evolutionary Archaeology: a range of approaches that stress the importance of evolutionary theory as a unifying theory for archaeology. Feminist Archaeology: an approach to archaeology that focuses on the way archaeologists study and represent gender and that brings attention to gender inequities in the practice of archaeology. Hermeneutics: a theory of interpretation that stresses the interaction between the presuppositions we bring to a problem and the independent empirical reality of our observations and experiences. Induction: drawing general inferences on the basis of available empirical data. Middle-Range Research: research investigating processes that can be observed in the present and that can serve as a point of reference to test hypotheses about the past. National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), Section 106: The legislation that regulates Cultural Resource Management archaeology. Neolithic: the period in which there are polished stone tools. Also called the New Stone Age. New Archaeology (or Processual Archaeology): an approach to archaeology based firmly on scientific method and supported by a concerted effort aimed at the development of theory.

Copyright © 2014, 2011, 2008 by Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved. 9 Paleolithic: the period during which humans lived with now extinct animals. Also called the Old Stone Age. Postprocessual Archaeology: a movement, led by British archaeologist Ian Hodder, that argues archaeologists should emulate historians in interpreting the past. Systems Theory: an archaeological theory which views society as an interconnected network of interacting elements. Three-Age System: a system developed by Danish antiquarian Christian Jürgensen Thomson that catalogues artifacts into relics of three periods—the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age—based on the material of manufacture. Thunderstones: objects such as ground stone axes that people in Medieval Europe believed were formed in spots where lightning struck the earth.

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES AND STUDENT PROJECTS 1. Classroom Activity To teach students the scientific method, lead them through the stages of observation, hypothesis formation, hypothesis testing (via experimentation or data analysis), theory, and law. To do this, borrow a well-known topic from pseudoarchaeology (i.e. Nasca lines are landing strips for aliens, the Myth of the Moundbuilders, the lost continents of Lemuria or Atlantis) and discuss each with students, following the scientific method. In this way you can demonstrate the value of skepticism while showing how proper scientific inquiry is conducted.

2. Student Project Instruct students to research Thor Heyerdahl online to create a biography that describes the man and his work. Tell students to then write an additional section telling whether they think Heyerdahl was an archaeologist or a pseudoarchaeologist, and explain the reason for their conclusion.

3. Classroom Activity Present students with data from a local archaeological site. Divide students into at least two groups (always divide class into group numbers divisible by two) and assign each

Copyright © 2014, 2011, 2008 by Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved. 10 group the task of interpreting the site’s data. One group will interpret the data from a processual archaeology perspective while the other will use a postprocessual archaeology approach. Have groups present their interpretations to the class and then discuss with everyone the differences of the two approaches and the advantage and disadvantages of each school of thought.

SUGGESTED FILMS Other People’s Garbage (60 minutes; Alexandria, VA: Public Broadcasting Associates, Inc.). This film reviews the findings of archaeologists working at three different sites in the US and explains what their findings reveal about daily life in America’s recent past.

Archaeology: Questioning the Past (26 minutes; Berkeley: Marin Community College). Provides students with an introduction to the science of archaeology and shows various archaeological digs involving students from Marin Community College.

INTERNET EXPLORATION LINKS Archaeology http://www.cyberpursuits.com/archeo/ This site offers news feeds and links to sites and archaeology projects in specific regions and specific archaeological subdisciplines. It also leads to information about archaeology programs and additional resources.

ArchNet http://archnet.asu.edu/ Hosted and maintained by the staff at the Archaeological Research Institute at Arizona State University, ArchNet provides links to archaeology sites by region and topic as well as leads to educational and research resources and archaeological institutions and organizations.

Deduction & Induction http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/dedind.php This page instructs the reader on the differences between deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning.

Copyright © 2014, 2011, 2008 by Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved. 11 Archaeological Theory http://www.indiana.edu/~arch/saa/matrix/ia/ia03_mod_04.html This page, hosted by Indiana University Bloomington, clarifies the major differences among key archaeological paradigms.

SUGGESTED READINGS Lewis Binford. (1983). In Pursuit of the Past. New York: Thames and Hudson. Sally Binford and Lewis Binford. (1968). New Perspectives in Archaeology. New York: Aldine. David Clark. (1978). Analytical Archaeology. New York: Columbia University Press. Joan Gero and Margaret Conkey, eds. (1991). Engendering Archaeology. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Donald Grayson. (1983). The Establishment of Human Antiquity. New York: Academic Press. Ian Hodder. (1986). Reading the Past. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Ian Hodder. (1999). The Archaeological Process. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Johannes H. N. Loubser. (2003). Archaeology: The Comic. Oxford, UK: Altamira. Robert Preucel and Ian Hodder, eds. (1996). Contemporary Archaeology in Theory. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Alain Schnapp. (1996). The Discovery of the Past. New York: Abrams. Bruce Trigger. (1989). A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Gordon Willey and Jeremy Sabloff. (1980). A History of American Archaeology. San Francisco: Freeman.

Chapter 2

PUTTING THE PICTURE TOGETHER

Part One: The Past is a Foreign Country: Getting from Here to There Learning Objectives After reading the chapter, you should understand:

• The process by which the depth of human antiquity was recognized.

• The development of an explicitly scientific approach to archaeology by the New Archaeologists, also known as processual archaeologists.

• The questions raised about a scientific approach by postprocessual archaeology. Origins of Archaeology

• Early State Societies  Interest in ancient objects was neither archaeological nor scientific  Nabonidus, king of Babylon, excavated temple ruins to rededicate them to deities  Thutmose IV (1412-1402 BC) excavated the Sphinx at Giza because he believed that the sun god would make him Pharaoh if he did so Origins of Archaeology

• Emergence of Archaeology  Three Age System for organizing time  Developed by C.J. Thomsen (Danish antiquarian)  Divided prehistory: Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages Establishment of Human Antiquity

Irrefutable evidence of human artifacts In 1800s contextually with extinct animal bones

Neanderthal skull provides evidence In 1857 of a premodern human

Darwin published On The Origin of Species; In 1859 Lyell studied geologic time and humans

In 1865 Lubbock defined Neolithic and Paleolithic eras Establishment of Human Antiquity

• Questionable Archaeological Motivations  Imperial archaeology  Looting by treasure hunters  Connecting to ancient Greeks  Confirming Biblical events  Justifying oppression and colonialism  Validating racist policies (e.g., Nazi’s concept of racial purity) Developing Method and Theory

• Stratigraphic Method  Sir Flinders Petrie pioneered methods of stratigraphic excavation and seriation Developing Method and Theory

• Culture History  North American archaeologists:  Had goal of developing chronology  Developed culture histories through formal schemes  Classified sites into culture groups using the Midwestern Taxonomic System  Depression archaeology drove need Developing Method and Theory

• V. Gordon Childe  Recognized patterning in archaeological collections across Europe  Started shift from artifacts to societies  Proposed the occurrence of two worldwide societal revolutions  Neolithic revolution—the emergence of settled villages and agriculture  Urban revolution—appearance of cities and complex forms of government Archaeology as Science

• Late 1940s: Developing Scientific Methods  Archaeologists began to focus on the study of ancient societies, not just the description and classification of artifacts as in the past Inductive and Deductive Reasoning

• Induction  Involves drawing general inferences on the basis of particular data  Before 1960s, archaeological work focused on collecting site data, then extrapolating to a culture Inductive and Deductive Reasoning

• Deduction  Involves drawing particular inferences from general laws and models  Involves hypothesis testing  Posits general hypothesis to explain specific data  Is characteristic of the work in hard sciences Processual Archaeology: New Archaeology

• Introduced by Lewis Binford in the 1960s  “Facts do not speak for themselves”  We have to ask the appropriate questions to learn anything about the past  How to get from a static artifact to a dynamic society?  More data or better methods do not help  Archaeology must focus on deductive scientific work Middle-Range Research

• Middle-Range Research (Binford)  Allows archaeologists to make statements about past processes based on observations made on present archaeological materials

• Key Methodological Steps  Observe processes in the present  Analyze material patterning left by those processes Middle-Range Research

• Alison Wylie’s Contribution  Induction still valid as science is not EITHER induction OR deduction  There are varied ways to get to inferences Systems Theory

• Systems Theory Defined  A system is an interconnected network of elements that together form a whole

• The New Archaeologists  Applied systems theory to the study of past societies  Used systems theory to explain the feedback loop of changes in the archaeological record that result from changes in interrelated aspects of culture Cultural Resource Management

• Archaeology carried out with the aims of mitigating the effects of development  National Historic Preservation Act, Section 106 (1966)  Additional municipal or state legislation may regulate the impact of development on archaeological sites Postprocessual Archaeology

• A reaction led by Ian Hodder against processual archaeology that posits that archaeology:  Should not be a hard science like physics  Should emulate historians in interpreting the past  Should work to understand the past from the perspective of the people who lived through the past—EMIC not ETIC  Should not be hypothesis-based—contextual data is very important and requires a dynamic interpretation  Is not “truth” based Hermeneutics

• Hermeneutics Concept  Is central to postprocessual archaeology  Encompasses a theory of interpretation  Stresses the interaction between the presuppositions brought to a problem and the independent empirical reality of observations and experiences  Biases  Reinterpretations  Continual enquiry FIGURE 2.12 The hermeneutic spiral represents a process of continually refining knowledge through an ongoing process of confronting preexisting knowledge with new information. Hermeneutics versus Processual

• New Archaeology tests archaeological hypotheses • In Hermeneutics archaeologists come with preexisting knowledge and questions • Hermeneutic interpretation is an open-ended cycle of continual inquiry • Different presuppositions could mean different interpretations Feminist Archaeology

• Feminist Archaeology  Is concerned with gender inequities in the practice of archaeology  Focuses on how archaeologists study gender  Examines a wide range of topics  Focuses on how archaeologists represent gender:  Masked bias towards viewing men as the active agents of change and women as passive followers  Who does what in a society—depends on who and how you research Agency Theory

• Agency Theory  Is the assumption that the basic unit of archaeological interest is the individual, not society  Focus on purposeful actions of individuals in society  Requires constant balancing through:  Recognition that history consists of the choices and actions of individuals  Awareness that the choices people make are strongly shaped by (a) the social world and (b) the material conditions in which they live Evolutionary Archaeology

• Evolutionary Archaeology (Dunnell)  Stresses the importance of evolutionary theory as a unifying theory for archaeology  Encompasses a range of approaches:  Ecological studies of changes in culture as changes in human adaptation  Artifact studies that explain changes in frequencies and types of artifacts at sites in terms of selection Key Terms

agency theory National Historic Preservation archaeological theory Act, Section 106 deduction Neolithic emic New Archaeology/processual archaeology etic Paleolithic evolutionary archaeology postprocessual archaeology feminist archaeology Systems theory hermeneutics Three-Age system induction thunderstones middle-range research