Archeology . . . the whole SHIBANG!

age of science

age of agency

science (methods) and humanity (interpretation)

Is archaeology “just the facts, ma’am” or subject to debate?

Can the archaeology of the ancient past offer lessons for today?

History documented to some extent, but a lot not documented → arch helps to find those stories that are not recorded

(Norman & Smith)

Mounds, etx → events that build community, social ties

Werewecomoco, more politically engaged – civic engagement
- Tends to be a focus on Jamestown, Williamsburg… minor focus on past of the natives
- Working to get more politically engaged

1) Difficult to identify specific events / individuals shaping history
2) Difficult to grasp the meaning in past symbols, ceremonies, and ideologies
3) Interpreting histories of past societies from garbage requires a convoluted set of methods

1) Access to long-term history of social change (vs. event-driven history), especially prior to writing
2) Regional comparison – ability to draw conclusions by looking at different times and places
- Can conduct surveys to look into the history of sites, use regional comparison
(e.g., when / how did agriculture emerge and what does that tell us about the process?)
3) Access to the “materiality” of the past:
History has a material dimension in which objects, architecture, spaces express / frame experience
- Experience shape objects and objects shape experiences

Classical antiquity rediscovered
Greece and Rome

Ancient objects as symbols of one’s refinement
Acquiring objects as a sign of wealth

Darwin, Marx challenge conception of past based on the Bible
More scientific and evidence based, straying away from religion

Scientific search for [universal] laws (positivism)

Humanistic recovery of agency and meaning (subjectivity)
Science has its limits
Eugenics – Nazism

context in which something is used

context artifact is found in

- Looking at Neanderthal stone tools in the layers of caves in France
- Bordes: different cultures for different levels of the tools… different identity of cultures
- Binford: disagrees, bc culture is about adaptation, so they were solving problems… seeing different stone tools to respond to those different/new needs

Conservation ethic - be considerate of how your are treating the site, once the site is excavated it’s gone… site is damaged… so you should dig only what you must
Other ethical / legal obligations – be aware of descendent native communities
Research questions and research design – having a plan for what you’re doing

Superposition / stratigraphy, seriation

C14, dendrochronology, trapped charge dating

Styles come and go, Popularity can be understood through counts of objects, “battleship-shaped” curves
⇒ Putting things in a relative order

Clovis points throughout N. America 10,000 years ago
Diagnostic of earliest Americans, who were big-game hunters

Undeniable artifacts - something that says a person was here
Indisputable context and association – a sign that the site hasn’t been disturbed too much, intact context
Valid dates – relative dating… absolute dating is always better

Stone tools and organics (e.g., basketry) Stratified site Radiocarbon dates for oldest layer: 15,000 bp

- The arch of groups and how they relate, form institutions, and how relations are expressed

- No, but do have relationship to arch record
- Reflected in material stuff

Tribes, Chiefdoms, state societies

Georgian – balanced, symmetrical, very different to the medieval culture that preceded it

CAN BE EITHER
e.g., Leone on colonial gardens
Ostentatious displays of power and wealth
Symmetry and order: control over nature

Migration / diffusion
Culture as a shared set of norms
New group arrives carrying new set of norms or things change by passing on techniques through diffusion

Response to envt’l conditions
Culture as adaptation (solves problems)
Culture is adaption – way of solving problems especially environmental ones

Culture is a set of symbolic templates (structures)
Cultural changes as a result of changes in meaning of structural elements
Culture change is less predictable and more random

For most of their history they were very efficient in using natural resources, don’t settle in one place for a long period of time, population is relatively small
Shift to power mode – investing time in one particular place (Chaco Canyon, Pueblo Bonito), planting squash and corn (agriculture), road systems, moment in American history that did not last

beginnings of a fully modern expression of imagined worlds and narrative accounts in a sacred place

HG making communities, ceremonies, trading

mound building societies dominating trade networks and whatnot

change in status

building walls

center of trade

lots of temples

first urban environment, huge zigarat

Lived on the eastern part of Med., first to domesticate plants – wheat and barley
Selecting specific attributes for wheat so they were edible