JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 16, 301±333 (1997) ARTICLE NO. AA970314 Population Structure, Cultural Transmission, and Frequency Seriation Carl P. Lipo Department of Anthropology, Box 353100, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-3100 [email protected] Mark E. Madsen Emergent Media, Inc., 1809 Seventh Ave. E., Suite 908, Seattle, WA 98101 [email protected] Robert C. Dunnell Department of Anthropology, Box 353100, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-3100 [email protected] and Tim Hunt Emergent Media, Inc., 1809 Seventh Ave. E., Suite 908, Seattle, WA 98101 [email protected] Received June 14, 1995; revision received September 30, 1997; accepted October 2, 1997 The task of physics is not to answer a set of ®xed been augmented by ethnographic lore and questions about nature, . We do not know in anthropological theory. The Americanist ar- advance what are the right questions to ask, and chaeological literature, consequently, testi- we often do not ®nd out until we are close to an ®es to a long ¯irtation with the de®nition of answer. ``whole cultural'' units comparable to ``cul- Weinberg (1997:215) ture'' or ``society'' as used by sociocultural anthropologists, units themselves not far re- It is not that sociologists are studying the wrong moved from their vernacular counterparts. things, but rather that they are studying them in the wrong ways. the major reason for this ap- Variations of these units include ``ethnic pears to be the way in which sociologists have cho- groupings'' (e.g., Holmes 1903; Cordell and sen to conceptualize the phenomena of interest to Yannie 1991), ``cultures'' (e.g., Rouse 1939, them. 1955), ``phases'' (e.g., Chapman 1989; Krause Willer and Webster (1970: 748) 1977; Lehmer 1966, 1971; McKern 1939; Phil- lips 1970; Phillips and Willey 1953; Williams INTRODUCTION 1954, 1980; Willey and Phillips 1955,1958), ``provinces'' (e.g., Cordell and Plog 1979; Rather than being theory-driven, archaeo- Plog 1979, 1983), and ``polities'' (e.g., Ham- logical inquiry has been modeled, albeit of- mond 1972; King and Freer 1995; Peregrine ten unconsciously, from our own social ex- 1991, 1992, 1995; Upham 1982, 1983; Upham periences. In the United States, this basis has et al. 1981; Upham and Plog 1986). While 301 0278-4165/97 $25.00 Copyright q 1997 by Academic Press All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. AID JAA 0314 / ai06$$$$21 01-05-98 08:02:32 jaaal AP: JAA 302 LIPO ET AL. anthropological interpretations dominate which contrasted starkly with the essential- the use of these units, all are de®ned by and ist position of Grif®n and Phillips. This posi- rest upon similarities and differences be- tion led Ford to break with his co-authors tween archaeological assemblages. What all and analyze spatial variability quantita- of these formulations have in common is an tively in the lower Mississippi valley data in attempt to capture patterns of interaction. a separate publication (1952).1 Ford capitu- The Midwestern Taxonomic Method lated to his co-authors on the matter of time (hereafter MTM), which created a set of ®ve and broke the continuous sequence of events scaled units (component, focus, aspect, represented by seriation into a series of chro- phase, pattern, and base) on the basis of phe- nological periods compatible with an essen- netic similarity (e.g., Sokal and Sneath 1963) tialist view. The combination of periods and between components (more or less homoge- local areas supplied the archetype for the neous assemblages) (e.g., Dunnell 1971; phase (Phillips and Willey 1953; Willey and Krause 1977; Trigger 1989), was an early Phillips 1955, 1958; compare PFG and Phil- attempt to replace ethnographic-based lips [1970] for a concrete example). cultural units with archaeological ones Williams (1954) was ®rst to apply the Wil- (McKern 1939). Relations between units ley and Phillips system anywhere and did were ahistorical in consequence of em- so in the Mississippi valley. Phillips' study ploying an ad hoc set of set of ``traits'' to (1970) has had the greatest impact on the assess similarity and were so recognized by area because he de®ned phases for the entire the architect (McKern 1939). As chronologi- chronological sequence over the whole of cal data became available, the MTM was re- the Mississippi river alluvial valley. Given placed by the nonhierarchical and decidedly this history it is not surprising that ``phase'' historical system of Phillips and Willey. Of has been the dominant whole cultural unit the units proposed, Phillips and Willey's used to describe the archaeology of the cen- phase is the most widely employed cultural tral Mississippi river valley (e.g., House unit with both spatial and temporal compo- 1991, 1993, 1995; D. Morse 1973, 1982, 1989, nents (Chapman 1989; Phillips 1970; Phillips 1990; Morse and Morse 1983, 1996; P. Morse and Willey 1953; Willey and Phillips 1955, 1981, 1990; Smith 1990). 1958; Williams 1954). Although rooted strictly in measures of The phases of the central Mississippi river artifact similarity, archaeologists quickly valley have their roots in the Lower Missis- gave phases ethnographic meanings. Even sippi River Valley Survey conducted by though phases, for example, are explicitly Phillips, Ford, and Grif®n (1951; hereafter, de®ned as ``an archaeological unit pos- PFG) in the 1940s. The analytic focus of the sessing traits suf®ciently characteristic to PFG study is a series of seriations con- distinguish it from all other units similarly structed by Ford. Similarity was assessed by conceived, whether of the same or other cul- a set of historical types based on types ex- tures or civilizations, spatially limited to or- plicitly created by Ford (1936) to measure der of magnitude of a locality or region and time. Because spatial variation in frequen- chronologically limited to a relatively brief cies of historical types was suf®ciently large period of time'' (Willey and Phillips that no single seriation could be constructed 1958:22). Although it has been routinely sug- for the entire survey area, Ford had to divide gested that ``the equivalent of phase . the Mississippi river alluvial valley into a ought to be `society''' (Willey and Phillips series of ``local areas'' (St. Francis, Memphis, 1958:49, italics ours; Rouse [1955] expresses Upper Sun¯ower, Lower Arkansas, Lower Yazoo). These local areas were analytic con- 1 This is why, one suspects, that Ford's types in PFG trivances, not archaeological discoveries (cf. have become the standard (O'Brien 1996) instead of Ford 1952). Ford took a materialist approach Phillips' (1970) more detailed types published later. AID JAA 0314 / ai06$$$$21 01-05-98 08:02:32 jaaal AP: JAA CULTURAL TRANSMISSION 303 a similar view though with different termi- ceramics frequencies used to place assem- nology), early workers tended to be more blages particular phases show that phases cautious about the culture/phase equiva- are not groups (i.e., the members of one lence (e.g., Abbot 1972; McKern 1939; Willey phase are not more similar to members of and Phillips 1953) and realized that such the same group than they are to members equivalencies were accidental rather than of others). structural. Pressure to be ``anthropological'' While particular formulations may be de- has tended to overwhelm such wisdom in fective because of empirical mistakes (Fox many areas, including the central Missis- 1992), a good deal of the problem arises sippi river valley. Here, many archaeologists through the grouping legacy inherited from treat archaeological phases as if they are the the MTM. Indeed, outside the Mississippi material manifestations of ethnic, political, valley many phases are just renamed foci. or linguistic units. Recent central Mississippi Through Ford's work (1935a, 1935b, 1936a, River valley research has often focused on 1936b, 1938) the Mississippi alluvial valley relating these phases to historical groups already had a budding chronology by the (e.g., Brain 1978, 1985; Hudson 1985; Morse mid-1930s and thus the ahistorical focus and Morse 1983, 1990, 1996; Phillips 1970; never opened a foothold in this region Phillips et al. 1951; Rouse 1965; Phillips and (Dunnell 1996). To the extent that phases are Willey 1953; cf. Abbot 1972). Not surpris- actually groups (instead of classes) the gen- ingly, there is little discussion regarding eration of new data (ceramic assemblages) their de®nition (e.g., Eighmy and LaBelle requires the reassessment of similarity be- 1996:56). Indeed, Phillips, one of the main tween all assemblages, not just the new ones. proponents of the phase concept, candidly This was never done; ad hoc extensional admits that the procedures for constructing de®nition was used to assign new data to phases are ``regrettably non-objective'' old names (Dunnell 1971). Thus the (1970: 523). ``phases'' of the Mississippi alluvial valley Still more recently, phase formulations quickly lost their coherence and rationale, and interpretations of central Mississippi producing the mess documented by Fox and river valley archaeology based on them O'Brien. The degree to which such units have been criticized as too simplistic. It has ``worked'' (i.e., displayed time/space conti- been argued that neither ethnic, political, guity) is a function of the units used in as- or linguistic units have straightforward sessing similarity (i.e., ceramic types). So analogs in artifact distributions (Fox 1992, long as stylistic (i.e., historical or neutral 1998; House 1991; Mainfort 1995; O'Brien [Dunnell 1981]) traits dominated in the as- and Fox 1994). Mainfort (1995), for exam- sessment of similarity, phases would neces- ple, has proposed that while ``some pre- sarily display time/space contiguity. Be- viously-de®ned late period phases repre- cause phases create boundaries regardless of sent relatively valid units (i.e., statistically the structure of the archaeological record, reproducible), while others are much less phases, their locations and distributions, are robust, and some simply do not exist.'' inappropriate descriptions of the archaeo- Other reanalyses suggest that phases may logical record when our goal is to study cul- have very little empirical basis.