CC ONTRONTROVERSIESOVERSIES ININ ARARCHAEOLCHAEOLOGYOGY Page Intentionally Left Blank CCONTRONTROVERSIESOVERSIES ININ ARARCHAEOLCHAEOLOGYOGY ALICE BECK KEHOE First published 2008 by Left Coast Press, Inc Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright @ 2008 by Alice Beck Kehoe All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN 978-1-59874-061-5 hardcover ISBN 978-1-59874-062-2 paperback Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: Kehoe, Alice Beck, 1934– Controversies in archaeology / Alice Beck Kehoe. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-59874-061-5 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-59874-062-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Archaeology—Social aspects. 2. Archaeology—Moral and ethical aspects. 3. Archaeology—Methodology. 4. Archaeology—Case studies. 5. Prehistoric peoples. 6. Antiquities. I. Title. CC175.K44 2008 930.1—dc22 200800354 C ONTENTS PREFACE ................................................................................................................9 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................11 CHAPTER 1 The Past is Today.............................................................................21 CHAPTER 2 Scientific Method ............................................................................38 CHAPTER 3 Popular Archaeology ........................................................................58 CHAPTER 4 America’s First Nations and Archaeology .........................................79 CHAPTER 5 Finding Diversity...........................................................................101 CHAPTER 6 Religion and Archaeology ..............................................................120 CHAPTER 7 “Diffusion” versus Independent Invention .....................................140 CHAPTER 8 What People Before Us Could Do: Earlier Technologies ..............172 CHAPTER 9 Neandertals, Farmers, Warriors, and Cannibals: Bringing in Biological Data...........................................................................198 CHAPTER 10 Competing Theories of Cultural Development...............................220 NOTES...............................................................................................................237 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................242 INDEX................................................................................................................251 ABOUT THE AUTHOR ..........................................................................................256 Page Intentionally Left Blank ILLUSTRATIONS FRONTISPIECE Global map with sites mentioned in text. 18 FIGURE 1.1 Parthenon temple sculpture, Athens, Greece . 26 FIGURE 1.2 Figurine of a leader, Colima, West Mexico . 29 FIGURE 1.3 Tomb of the Lord of Sipán, Peru . 36 FIGURE 2.1 Bison driven into corral, Boarding School site, Montana . .48 FIGURE 2.2 Blackfoot Indian elders examining Boarding School bison drive excavation . .49 FIGURE 2.3 Excavating bison skull at the Gull Lake bison drive . .51 FIGURE 2.4 Sequence of styles of stone points, Gull Lake site . .52 FIGURE 2.5 Solutré, France, excavation of site with horse and reindeer drives . .55 FIGURE 3.1 The cover of the sarcophagus in tomb of Lord Pacal of Palenque . .60 FIGURE 3.2 (a) W. Flinders Petrie, leading late-nineteenth-century Egyptologist; and (b) Tom Kehoe, pointing to a stratum in a bison drive site . .64 FIGURE 3.3 Cahokia’s principal mound, called Monks Mound, is one thousand feet long and one hundred feet high . .66 FIGURE 3.4 Speculative drawing of Atlantis . .71 FIGURE 4.1 Frederica de Laguna, Danish anthropologist Kaj Birket-Smith, and Chugach collaborators Matrona Tiedemann and Chief Makari . .82 FIGURE 4.2 Kennewick Man, the 9,400-year-old skeleton from western Washington state . .85 FIGURE 4.3 Kayasochi Kikawenow, a Cree Indian woman in Manitoba, Canada, who died about A.D. 1665 . .87 FIGURE 4.4 Hopi middle school students in the Hopi Footprint Project . .88 FIGURE 4.5 Battle of the Little Bighorn, drawn by White Swan, a Crow Indian participant . .99 FIGURE 5.1 Paiute women gathering food, Utah, 1870s . .106 FIGURE 5.2 A Cree “country wife” in the Canadian fur trade . .110 FIGURE 5.3 Alice Kehoe recording fallen chimney, François House fur trade post, Saskatchewan . .111 FIGURE 5.4 Excavation of a saloon in Block 88, Virginia City, Nevada . .113 FIGURE 5.5 Fort Ross, the Russian-American Fur Company post in northern California . .117 FIFURE 6.1 Archaeologist Marija Gimbutas . .122 FIGURE 6.2 Small pendant representing male genitalia . .124 FIGURE 6.3 Figurine of a leader, Colima, West Mexico . .129 FIGURE 6.4 Gros Ventre leader Niatohsa, painted by Karl Bodmer . .130 FIGURE 6.5 Yahweh’s consort, the Canaanite goddess Asherah . .135 FIGURE 7.1 Monumental head of an Olmec king, Mexico . .151 FIGURE 7.2 Olmec-style pottery, Mexico . .152 FIGURE 7.3 Three principal types of boats . .154 FIGURE 7.4 The Kensington Runestone, with rune inscription carved by Norse explorers in Minnesota, 1362 . .161 FIGURE 8.1 Stonehenge, England . .174 FIGURE 8.2 Map of Moose Mountain medicine wheel, showing astronomical sighting lines . .176 FIGURE 8.3 Central cairn, Moose Mountain medicine wheel . .177 FIGURE 8.4 Pyramid of Giza and Sphinx, Egypt . .180 FIGURE 8.5 Teotihuacán, Mexico, pyramid . .182 FIGURE 8.6 Map of Hopewell geometric earthworks around Chillicothe, Ohio . .185 FIGURE 8.7 View of Easter Island statues . .187 FIGURE 8.8 Excavation of an artificial stone floor in Area 12 of the Gault Paleoindian site, Texas . .194 FIGURE 8.9 Stone artifacts from the Gault site, Texas . .195 FIGURE 9.1 Map of Indo-European and Semitic languages . .205 FIGURE 9.2 A Mesa Verde pueblo, Colorado . .209 FIGURE 9.3 Mound 72, Cahokia, Illinois . .212 FIGURE 9.4 Shrine of the Wa-Xo’-Be (Hawk), the war medicine bundle of the Osage . .214 FIGURE 10.1 ‘Ksan village, Gitksan Tsimshian Nation, British Columbia . .233 T ABLES TABLE 7.1 Transoceanic Small Craft Crossings . 147 TABLE 7.2 Aztec Day Names Compared with Chinese and Greek Lunar Animals . 156 TABLE 10.1 Morgan’s Scheme for Cultural Evolution . 229 PREFACE ontroversies in Archaeology is not intended to be, itself, controversial. C Controversies about archaeology and controversies over archaeological finds abound. This book presents a selection of the most widely known contro- versies, drawing from them an explanation of scientific method and examples of critical thinking. Neither an exercise in debunking nor a promoter of pet theo- ries, it aims to steer readers along a path between academic dogma and outré enthusiasms. At this level of the general reader or undergraduate student, it is valuable to present something of the range of controversies encountered around a variety of archaeological topics. To go into depth on every example would exhaust the reader, so I have given more space to illustrative cases, and for others I’ve noted accessible sources that can be pursued by interested readers (and students doing term papers). Had I simplified the subject entirely, focusing chapters on only one or two cases and omitting an indication of the range, I would have made this “Controversies for Dummies.” Learning about the much-ballyhooed famous finds should be intriguing to general readers, and students will, I hope, talk with their instructors for further details and analysis. In my own teaching, I’ve looked for textbooks that give a range of examples on the topics under examination, freeing me to discuss ones I find particularly significant. These may include my own research (as I use it in this book), and if the textbook offers a satisfactory range, the cases I choose to expound on can be related to the breadth of the topic. Overall, this book is designed to encourage continuing pleasure in the fascinating world of archaeology and its practitioners, while enhancing readers’ discrimination between empirical data and speculation. 9 ALICE BECK KEHOE—CONTROVERSIES IN ARCHAEOLOGY I thank Mitch Allen, publisher and experienced archaeologist, for inviting me to write this book, and for his careful review of the manuscript. Carol Leyba was a thoroughly pleasant and professional production editor. Mitch and I teach undergraduates, and this is the level I write for; hence, this book does not discuss disciplinary controversies over whether X was an archaic state or a chiefdom, or what sampling strategy will yield adequate data— Professor Phuddy Duddy can write about professional debates. We hope all the US (Uncertain Students—thanks, Tim Pauketat) out there will enjoy the book, and find archaeology as intriguing as we do. 10 I NTRODUCTION hy should there be controversies in archaeology? Isn’t archaeology a sci- W ence? Surely, we would suppose, intelligent use of the scientific method will produce valid knowledge of our past. Science is like a rock held firmly to earth by