Epistemological change and the Goals of American Archaeology

Speculative Period continues, but Classificatory – Descriptive Period (1840-1914) develops after 1840, with the beginnings of archaeological science

Moves hand-in-hand with anthropology, especially its descriptive branch, ethnography

Both have the origins of Indians as their primary concern.

The early years of the period have the beginnings of systematic archaeology excavation methods

There is also recognition that the origins of Indians was out of Asia across the Bering Straits

The influences of a European scientific tradition were starting to come into play

1. Throughout the period there would be a steady increase in the discovery and description of antiquities as the US pushed westward.

2. Work began to be sponsored by the government, universities, museums, scientific societies.

3. Archaeology became both a recognized avocation and a vocation which toward the end of the period would be taught in universities.

4. Alliance between archaeology and anthropology began as a long-lasting conceptual union.

Major Scientific Institutions Develop

Smithsonian Institution and the Bureau of American Ethnology

Peabody Museum at Harvard

Field Museum in Chicago

American Museum of Natural History

Anthropology Departments at Columbia and UC-Berkeley

Out of this grows the major data collecting period regarding American Indians

Leads ultimately to the demise of Unilinear Evolution

Also leads to the rise of cultural ecology and multilinear evolution with the work of Steward and others

From all this, the culture area approach is developed as the major description-based classification scheme

The Goals of Archaeology

All are about reconstruction of the Past

About the term ‘reconstruction’

•Archaeologists assume that there was one past and that it is knowable

•This is a flawed perspective: there are multiple pasts, or at least, multiple threads

•Because we can’t witness these pasts, we are left with inference about them

•Thus, archaeologists don’t really reconstruct the past. Rather, they construct it.

The First Goal of Archaeology?

Reconstruction of Culture Histories

Requires consideration of archaeology’s three dimensions: form, space, time

Not as easy as it might seem

The Classificatory-Historical Period, 1914-1940

The central theme of this period is chronology - time

Always a problem for archaeologists

Simply understanding time is difficult

Changing perceptions of time, changing notions of time

The search for some kind of temporal control was crucial

The ‘Stratigraphic Revolution’ set the stage for chronology

Developed as part of European geology (Hutton & Lyell) and known in America as early as the 1860s

Acceptance of stratigraphy was delayed in North America

May be related to a rejection of evolutionary thinking 

Excavations in the eastern US with deep dark soils did not easily lend themselves to stratigraphic excavations Sometimes thin deposits, sometimes indiscernible due to uniformly dark soils, especially in the East

Manuel Gamio was a Boas student who did stratigraphic work in the Valley of Mexico

He clarified and objectively demonstrated the sequence of Mexican Pre-Columbian cultures

Gamio & Nelson

Nels Nelson was Kroeber’s student

His work dates about three years after Gamio, but his use and refinements went further 

Saw it in use in Spain and French, had done some stratigraphic excavation on California shell middens

His southwest work began between 1913-1915, but some results published as early as 1914

Nelson’s Refinements

Worked for the American Museum of Natural History in the Galisteo Basin of New Mexico on the Rio Grande Pueblos where there was already substantial work done

Bandelier and Hewitt had suggested the Pueblos had undergone a number of cultural transformations into contemporary times.

Used pottery styles linked to certain time frames―seriation

Used stratigraphy to prove the ceramic sequence Worked out various problems of intrusions and disturbances Led to regional chronology building

Seriation

Compare differential popularities in style trends for particular artifact types from site to site, reflected in "battleship curves."

When an absolute date is obtained for one site, this can be used to cross-date other sites in the relative chronological sequence.

Alfred Vincent Kidder

The first to make use of stratigraphy on a large scale

Work at Pecos Pueblo confirmed Nelson's Galisteo pottery sequence

Kidder worked out the major stratigraphic approach that became a standard for American archaeology

1. reconnaissance (site survey) 2. selection of criteria for ranking remains chronologically (pottery style, etc.) 3. seriation (putting sites in a series) for probable sequence stratigraphic digging 4. more detailed regional survey and dating of sites

How does Kidder's approach work for areas where easy stratigraphy not possible?

Use of Arbitrary levels

Use of Seriation, usually based on style

In its simplest definition, arrangement of some data or phenomenon into an order or series, using some consistent principle of ordering In archaeology, almost always concerned with time

A.E. Douglass developed the technique and Douglass dated Pueblo Bonito in the 1920s

Uses tree rings dated to their exact year of formation to analyze temporal and spatial patterns of processes in the physical and cultural sciences.

Limitations: use of wood, good preservation, good sequences for cross-dating

Absolute Dating: Dendrochronology

Cross -Dating

The idea of ‘types’

•A crucial concept in taxonomy/classification

•Similar to ‘index’ fossils in paleontology

•Assumes a clustering of certain traits

•A key to taxonomy: science of classification according to a pre-determined system

Archaeological Taxonomy in America

•Complex and the subject of argument

•Several types

•Culture Area approach

•Root-tree structure used in SW

•Genetic-taxonomic sought to classify groups by form

•Midwestern Taxonimic (MTS) or McKern system

•Focus, aspect, pattern

•Time and space were hard to avoid

W. C. McKern

The Direct-Historical Approach

Works back in time from documented historical periods into the prehistoric

Involves working on sites where known Indian groups lived, examining their artifact complexes and tracing them back into prehistoric sites and complexes, documenting the changes along the way Actually came out of ethnology with Cyrus Thomas in the mound studies, an several southwestern ethnographers

Also from amateur archaeology on the Plains - W. H. Over on Arikara and Pawnee

But, brought to the profession by W. D. Strong in 1935 in his Introduction to Nebraska Archaeology, followed soon after by Waldo Wedel's Direct Historical Approach in Pawnee Archaeology in 1936 Waldo Wedel

William Duncan Strong

The Society for American Archaeology was founded in 1934 in order to professionalize the discipline.

A key principle was to promote protection of archaeological resources.

The organization has changed dramatically over the years, but is the largest archaeology professional organization in the world with 7,000 members.

Society for American Archaeology

Advances in the study of early habitation of America complicate the picture

Many suspected that there was considerable antiquity for Indians in the Americas

No way to prove it

Hrdlicka and the demand for extraordinary proof

Folsom discovery (1926-7) provided such proof

Ales Hrdlicka

Original Folsom

type point

Reconstruction of Lifeways

The Second Goal of Archaeology?

Ethnohistory

American archaeology and ethnography had developed side-by-side, with common sharing of data

The ethnohistorical method, as it has come to be known, involves developing histories informed by ethnography, linguistics, archaeology, and ecology.

The American Society for Ethnohistory was founded in 1954 to promote the interdisciplinary investigation of the histories of the Native Peoples of the Americas.

The rise of ethnoarchaeology

The archaeological study of contemporary peoples.

Ethnoarchaeology often focuses particularly on the behavior patterns responsible for creating physical objects and their spatial distribution.

The use and abuse of ethnographic analogy

Explaining the archaeological evidence in terms of behavior recorded in the historic and ethnographic record

What makes a good analogy?

The closer in time, the better.

The more similar the cultural level, the better

The closer the ecological and geographical proximity, the better

Context & Function

Context: the full associational setting of any archaeological object, in or on the ground and its relationships to other objects and features

Contexts, when grouped into complexes or assemblages, may have cultural significance and may relate to natural environment

Function: the use of an object including the way in which it was made and its meanings

Both can be viewed synchronically (at a single point in time) or diachronically (through time or at different points in time).

Albert Spaulding/James Ford Debates

Spaulding championed measurements of artifacts, and that through these and statistics, artifact types (with context and function) could be discovered.

Ford said that it didn't matter and championed the idea that the artifact types were imposed, a designed construct of the archaeologist.

Was there a mental template behind the artifact used to create the artifact? A bit like the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Albert SpauldingJames A. Ford

Cultural Resources Management

The Antiquities Act of 1906

Based on the idea that Indians and their sites would disappear

Archaeological materials, including human remains, became “resources” or “objects of antiquity.”

Eventually, CRM would become the dominant kind of archaeology in America.

Settlement Pattern Analysis

The way in which humans disposed themselves over the landscape in which they lived

Key Concepts

•community organization: people of a culture who have day-to-day interaction •activity areas: a locus for a single activity, such as a hearth, butchering area •site types: activity areas are combined into functional major units •position in the environment, use of environment

Terminal Archaic and Woodland Settlement pattern for Troutbrook, CT

14C and the Radiocarbon Revolution

Willard Libby invented the process in 1949

Such absolute dating utterly changed views of the North American past

Continued refinements of the process

Limitations:

Need for organic materials

50-60k years maximum

Fluctuations that demand calibration

The Willey & Phillips System of Cultural Historical Integration (1958)

After 14C dating, taxonomy could include time, space, and form.

As with most taxonomies, it has been altered, argued about, and abused.

But does provide a basic framework for understanding culture history.

Phase: a member of a series that is generally part of a "local" or "regional sequence" temporal series

The Third Goal of Archaeology?

Reconstruction of Cultural Processes

Modern or ancient, people have to dispose of their garbage

The Modern Period, 1960s-1990s

A strong reemergence of evolutionary theory in the mid-1950s with the work of Julian Steward and Leslie White

The push was again to move archaeology toward being ahistorical, that is, toward seeking general principles or laws of human behavior that would cross-cut time and (pre)history

The general theoretical structure came from multilinear evolution, adaptation and cultural ecology.

The specific approach was to become explicitly scientific. The emphasis was on looking at archaeology as part of anthropology

Leslie A. White

Walter W. Taylor and the Conjunctive Approach

A Study of Archeology, 1948

An integrated discipline, combining the study of diet, settlement patterns, tools and other elements

Should provide a holistic view of the past.

Openly criticized the major archaeologists of his day, including Kidder

The New Archaeology,

a.k.a. Processual Archaeology

Lewis Binford became the outspoken American proponent of the approach with several articles and the 1968 publication of an edited volume (with Sally Binford) New Perspectives in Archaeology.

At the same, time in England David Clarke was publishing Analytical Archaeology.

The discipline considered itself in the midst of a paradigm shift, following Thomas Kuhn's ideas as expressed in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Lewis Binford

New technologies helped push it, for example the use of computers

Made application of statistics almost too easy, modeling of systems using simulations Great borrowing of techniques from other fields, notably geography

Environmental studies and their importance grew

Sometimes uses were incautious and misapplied

Embracing Anything New

A paradigm shift? The Increasing Dominance of the Philosophy of Science

The discipline considered itself in the midst of a paradigm shift, following Thomas Kuhn's ideas as expressed in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Thomas Kuhn

Logical Positivism, über ales

A nearly rigid belief that:

•there was one past.

•that it was knowable by following explicitly scientific principles.

•that general laws of human behavior would be made apparent.

•A key element was a focus on process, looking at how and why cultures changed through time

The New Creationists? (Kehoe)

Positivism proved to be alienating for some archaeologists and for many Indian people.

Many older archaeologists and their works were discounted.

For Indians, if the archaeologists’ pasts were the truth, that meant that their tribal oral traditions had to be false.

"[B]y its very nature [science] must challenge, not respect, or acknowledge as valid, such folk renditions of the past because traditional knowledge has produced flat earths, geocentrism, women arising out of men's ribs, talking ravens and the historically late first people of the Black Hills upwelling from holes in the ground.“

Ronald Mason

Bill Means, Lakota

“We do not need your past!”

Prairie Potawatomi Chick Hale:

My people did not cross the Bering Strait. We know much about our past through oral traditions. Why do archaeologists study the past? Are they trying to disprove our religion? We do not have to study our origins. I don't question my teachings. I don't need proof in order to have faith.

Esther Stutzman, a Coos:

The past is obvious to the Indian people, but it does not appear to be obvious to the white man.

Cecil Antone of the Gila River Indian Tribes: My ancestors, relatives, grandmother so on down the line, they tell you about the history of our people and it's passed on and basically, what I'm trying to say, I guess, is that archaeology don't mean nothing. We just accept it, not accept archaeology, but accept the way our past has been established and just keep on trying to live the same old style, however old it is.

Consider these statements from Indians about archaeology:

Major legislation

Antiquities Act of 1906 (16 USC 431-433; 34 Stat 225) Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987 (43 USC 2101-2106) Archeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 (16 USC 470aa-470mm) American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978, as amended (42 USC 1996-1996a) Archeological and Historic Preservation Act of 1974 (16 USC 469-469c) National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 USC 4321-4370c) National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended (16 USC 470-470w) Historic Sites, Buildings and Antiquities Act of 1935 (16 USC 461-467) Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (25 USC 3001-3013)

The Rapid Growth of Cultural Resources Management

CRM is approximately a $125,000,000 industry in the US annually.

CRM is largest employer of archaeologists at all levels of education.

CRM is the largest employer of BA level anthropology graduates.

CRM, a free journal from NPS

Burgeoning Cultural Resources Management

Though some tried to pull CRM into the realm of the New Archaeology, they largely didn’t succeed.

The Fourth Goal of Archaeology?

Reconstruction of Meaning

The Post-processual Period, 1985 - Now

Ian HodderAlison Wylie

Trying to make sense of a wide range of approaches as more and more questions arose from Processual Archaeology

Meg Conkey

Joan Gero

Increased range of voices and perspectives

What will the future hold for American Archaeology?