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On the Definition of Geoarchaeology On the Definition of Geoarchaeology Elizabeth K. Leach Metropolitan State University, 700 East Seventh Street, Saint Paul, Minnesota 55106-5000'" Two variations of the integration of geology and archaeology have been proposed in the literatUl'e-archaeological geology and geoarchaeology. However, there is no agreement among pmctilioners as to the legitimacy of t.he distinctions that have been made. This disagreement suggests thaI t.he objectives and assumptions of this interdisciplinary field have not been adequately discussed a mong its practitioners. The published defmition&of hoLh of thrse ;> ubfields emphasize their geological and historical aspects rather than their anthrupOlugH';tI ..!IIol 1"·,,,·,. .. ,· ,,,,1 "f;I,(lct ~. A comp(lrison with zooal'chaeology and paleoethnobotany suggests that the significall<.:e 01 g CO al'cl,,, .. ul;'6S l o nni h"" lIfl lnm 'ul archaeology has been slighted. This results from a fa ilure 10 recognize the symbolic character of humans' intel'action with their geologic environment. An attemp~ is made here to elm'ify the distindion between archaeological geology and geoarchaeology and to define objectives fOl' the latter subfield that have anthropological significance. 1 . 1882 John Wik'y & Sons. Inc. INTRODUCTION Every science con~ists oi" twu intm'Lwilll;U component.s. The firsL of the e is a well-defined subject matter, consisting of a body of knowledge, the assumptiul1::, we make about it, and the questions we ask of it. Secondly, the science consists of a toolkit, a series of methods and techniques for investigating the subject matter. Therefore, when we speak of a science, archaeology for example, we may speak of it in terms of either or both of these aspects. Archaeolog'y may be seen as the study of the material remains of past cuI tures, or as the process of digging in the earth for those material remains and the methods of analyzing what is recovered. These two aspects cannot be independent of each other: The assumptions we make about a body of knowledge are influenced by the methods we have for investigating the subject, and the techniques we use depend, in part, on the questions we have about the subject. But it is often helpful to consider these two aspects separately, if not independently. It can be helpful to look at the definition of a field in terms of its methods and techniques in order to learn something about the assumptions we hold concerning its subject matter. Archaeologists work in a geologic medium. Their interests lie in a particular subset of the geologic realm-the surficial subset-directly affecting and af­ fected by human actions. The archaeologist's initial extraction of information ' Mailing address: 1749 Blair Ave., Sl. Paul, Minnesota 55104-1703. Geoarchaeology: An International Journa l, Vol. 7, No.5, 405-417 (1992) '[) 1992 by ,John Wiley & Sons, Inc. eee 0883-6353i92/050405-13 DEFINITION OF GEOARCHAEOLOGY from that medium is by geologic means, although the information itself may be nongeological. Therefore, in this restricted sense of the respective sciences, that is, in terms of its techniques, archaeology may be considered as a subset of geology. The archaeological subfield of geoarchaeology explicitly claims ties with both geology and archaeology, and claims itself to be the intermeshing of the two fields. An examination of definitions of this subfield, then, should permit an evaluation of assumptions held and should indicate the types of questions asked in research. Presumably, such an examination should demonstrate an integration of both geology and archaeology. Because American archaeology has immutable ties with anthropology, evidence of anthropological concerns should be present in the definition of geoarchaeology as well. This paper attempts such an examination of geoarchaeology's definitions by comparing published definitions with those of similar interdisciplinary sub­ fields within archaeology. The result is a modified definition of the subject matter of geoarchaeology that considers the symbolic character of culture, and a proposal of long-term goals toward which geoarchaeology should wDrk. CONTRASTS IN DEVELOPMENT AND DEFINITION Botany and zoology, in the form of palynology and Pleistocene paleontology, along with geology were associated with archaeology during its early develop­ ment. All of these sciences were important as stratigraphic sciences in estab­ lishing the concept of "deep time" (Gould, 1987), or the immensity of Earth history, and the antiquity of man (Daniel, 1981). The problem and the approach were fundamentally historical. However, botany and zoology did not remain confined to this stratigraphic relationship with archaeology to the degTee that geology did. Botany and zoology can easily be associated with a nonhistorical or processual approach to archaeological questions-the floral and faunal worlds are directly associated with economy, and their archaeological remains are evidence of the process of human choice. These two sciences developed early, in the last half of the nineteenth and first third of the twentieth century, as adjunct sciences to archaeology. Although they were rarely integrated with the archaeological reports, reports of faunal and floral remains often appeared as appendices. Ethnobotany developed early as a distinct ecological field examining the rela­ tionships between plants and cultures (Hargrave, 1938; Jones, 1941). Lat . during the 1960s, these distinct fields were instrumental, along with so-called spatial studies, in the development of processual archaeology (Binford, 1964: Coe and Flannery, 1964; Cleland, 1966; Clark, 1972; Flannery, 1968; Struever. 1968; Winters, 1969; Whallon, 1973, 1974). In this respect, paleoethnobotan.· and zooarchaeology may be considered to be more mature scientific subfields of archaeology than is geoarchaeology-they are concerned with and motivat d by two complementary approaches to archaeological problems. Again, the (. two approaches are the historical and the processual. Botanical and zoologi al 406 VOl. 7, NO.5 DEFINITION OF GEOARCHAEOLOGY studies, for example, may examine the origins of agriculture in terms of its history in specific places or in terms of the general process of domestication. Zoo archaeology and paleoethnobotany further developed during the 1960s and 1970s along with the deductive revolution in archaeology while methods for defining, retrieving, and analyzing relevant data advanced. This advance­ ment in methods was in direct response to the deductive hypothesis testing being expounded by Binford (1962, 1968) among others, and the particular suite of hypotheses being tested: how humans adapted to their environment in support of and as a result of their social/cultural system. Binford has stated in a recent interview (Renfrew, 1987: 690) that the arguments in the literature of the 1940s and 1950s were over how to infer time from the archaeological record (also Binford, 1983: 95) and did not require a processual framework but rather a strictly stratigraphic framework. In the 1960s, the ecologically framed and economically oriented questions being asked were suited to the methods and assumptions of zooarchaeology and paleoethnobotany. The methods of geology that had figured so prominantly in earlier studies became subsidiary to these more anthropological questions. Stratigraphical geology, in the sense of studying the relations within and among strata, could have played a more vital role during this stage of archaeolo­ gy's development, particularly in dealing with questions of spatial relationships within sites (Whallon, 1973, 1974). Such a realization is only now becoming evident (Binford, 1981, 1982; Schiffer, 1972, 1976, 1983, 1987). However, even this relegates geology in archaeological research to the role of clarifying rela­ tionships among data which establish contemporaneity of activities. It is, there­ fore, strictly descriptive and of technical aspect (Gladfelter, 1981: 346). As such, geology in service to archaeology is not concerned with the relationships of data as social or cultural phenomena, or with establishing the behavioral significance of activities. It is not concerned with anthropological explanation. In fact, geology became associated with the conduct of archaeological field work and with the elucidation of field relations but not with tests of anthropological hypotheses (Watson et al., 1984: 46-47; Harris, 1979, 1989). This clarification of field relations is essential as a first step to meaningful explanation, but, unlike the development of zoology and botany, it does not provide the test of anthropological hypotheses. It only addresses the suitability of the data for testing the anthropological hypotheses. Geologic data of this sort can test hypotheses relevant to the archaeology of the problem in regard to site informa­ tion processes, for example, but not to the anthropology of the problem. At most, geology has been used to provide an environmental background to archae­ ological culture history or culture change (Gladfelter, 1981: 357). This type of environmental reconstruction is essentially an historical rather than a pro­ cessual endeavor. Because of the necessary association of geology and archaeology in terms of establishing temporal and cultural relationships, geology in the service of archaeology has always been associated with cultural historical studies (Leach, GEOARCHAEOLOGY: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL 407 DEFINITION OF GEOARCHAEOLOGY 1991). As a consequence, geoarchaeology has not explored the full anthropologi·
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