Archaeology Essentials Theories Methods and Practice 4nbsped 0500841381 9780500841389 Compress

Archaeology
Essentials
Archae
Essenti
Colin Renfrew
& Paul Bahn
ology
als Fourth Edition
Theories/Methods/Practice
With 303 illustrations
Archaeology Essentials © 2007, 2010, 2015, and 2018 Thames & Hudson Ltd, London
Text © 2007, 2010, 2015, and 2018 Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,
recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publisher.
First published in 2007 in paperback in the United States of America by

Thames & Hudson Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10110
www.thamesandhudsonusa.com
Fourth edition 2018
Library of Congress Control Number 2014944450
Paperback: ISBN 978-0-500-84138-9

Not for Sale: ISBN 978-0-500-29372-0
Printed and bound in China by C & C Offset Printing Co. Ltd

Contents
Preface 6
1 Searching for the Past 10 7 How Were Artifacts Made, 208

The History of Archaeology Used, and Distributed?
Technology, Trade, and Exchange
2 What Is Left? 38
The Variety of the Evidence 8 What Were They Like? 232
The Bioarchaeology of People
3 Where? 62
Survey and Excavation of Sites 9 What Did They Think? 252
and Features Cognitive Archaeology
4 When? 107 10 Why Did Things Change? 276

Dating Methods and Chronology Explanation in Archaeology
5 How Were Societies Organized? 142 11 Whose Past? 297

Social Archaeology Archaeology and the Public
6 What Was the Environment 175 12 The Future of the Past 316
and What Did They Eat? Managing Our Heritage
Environment, Subsistence, and Diet
Glossary 338
Illustration Credits 344
Useful Websites 345
Index 345
5
Preface
Archaeology Essentials is designed for college students taking an introductory

course in archaeology. It aims to convey some of the excitement of
archaeology in the twenty-first century and to give students a concise and
readable account of the ways in which modern archaeologists investigate
and understand our remote past. Archaeologists usually make the headlines
when they find something spectacular: in 2013, for example, the discovery of
the skeleton of King Richard III of England, buried in what remained of the
former Greyfriars church in Leicester, now a parking lot, created a sensation.
Here were the remains of Richard “Crouchback” (the deformity in the spine
clearly visible), the last English monarch to die in battle, at Bosworth Field
in 1485. However, most archaeologists spend their time engaged in research
that rarely makes the news, but is nevertheless vitally important for our
understanding of the past.
Archaeology is still often a matter of the painstaking excavation of
an ancient site, but today archaeologists can use new techniques that
sometimes avoid the need for excavation altogether. Advances in science and
computing, as well as in methods for analyzing and evaluating archaeological
finds, mean that archaeologists can reach conclusions that would have been
impossible just fifteen or twenty years ago.
This book will introduce students to the methods, new and old, used by
archaeologists: from the traditional shovel and trowel to satellite imaging,
laser-based mapping using LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), and
ground-based remote sensing. New technology has affected the work of
archaeologists in the laboratory as well as in the field: we cover, for example,
the use of genetic evidence.
But the story of modern archaeology is not just about technology. There
have been enormous advances in the questions archaeologists ask and in the
assumptions and theoretical models they apply to archaeological evidence.
Some questions, which an earlier generation of archaeologists might have
considered closed, have now been opened up for new examination.
6 Preface
In other words, whatever the focus of an individual college course, it is our
intention that students will find in this book an authoritative, concise, and
clear explanation of modern archaeological practice.
How to Use This Book

Archaeology Essentials is organized around the most important questions that
archaeologists ask. Chapter 1 looks at the history of archaeology, the kinds
of questions asked by archaeologists in the past and the methods they used.
In Chapter 2 we ask the question What Is Left?: the evidence with which
archaeologists work. Chapter 3 examines the question Where?: archaeologists
can learn a good deal from the context in which evidence is found, and have
developed many techniques for locating and recovering evidence.
In Chapter 4 the question is When?: how can we know whether something
dates from a few hundred years or many thousands of years ago? Chapter
5 examines the fascinating question of How Were Societies Organized?:
the nature, scale, and analysis of past social organization and identity. In
Chapter 6 we look at the world in which ancient people lived: What Was the
Environment and What Did They Eat? Technology was an important factor
in changing both society and the lives of our ancestors, as were contact and
trade with other ancient peoples: the key question for Chapter 7 is How Were
Artifacts Made, Used, and Distributed?
Chapter 8 looks at the archaeology of people: What Were They Like?
Chapter 9 addresses some of the more difficult questions that contemporary
archaeologists explore, for instance the ways ancient peoples thought about
their world and issues of identity: in other words, What Did They Think? An
equally difficult question is the subject of Chapter 10: Why Did Things Change?
In Chapter 11 we address the often controversial question Whose Past?: the
past may be remote in time but it can be very relevant today if it touches on
the beliefs, identity, and wishes of the descendants of those who lived long
ago. Finally, in Chapter 12 we look at both the practice of applied archaeology
(a profession that now employs more people than the academic archaeology
pursued in universities) and more generally: The Future of the Past. At the end
of that chapter we also include a section on building a career in archaeology.
If you follow the questions examined in this book you will understand
how archaeologists work, think, analyze, and seek to understand the past.
You will also discover that not all questions can be answered, or perhaps that
there might be more than one answer.
To help you understand how archaeology works, we have provided some
special features in this book. Case studies in boxes, shaded in blue and
featured throughout the text, show you archaeology in action and will help
you understand the issues that archaeologists deal with in their research and
fieldwork. Key Concept boxes summarize and review important concepts,
Preface 7
methods, or facts about archaeology. At the end of every chapter there is a
summary to recap what you have read and a suggested reading list to guide
you to the most important and helpful publications if you want to research any
subject further. Archaeological terms in the text that are defined in the glossary
are highlighted in bold (e.g. excavation) when they first occur in the book.
New to This Edition

This new fourth edition of Archaeology Essentials has been updated throughout,
to reflect recent advances in methodology, analysis, and understanding,
and to highlight the importance of contemporary archaeological issues:
• In Chapter 1, the history of archaeology has been further opened up to new

perspectives, with traditionally famous nineteenth-century male figures
now balanced with neglected pioneering voices.
• The fast-developing field of digital data capture and 3D modeling is covered
in Chapter 3 in a new section, “Excavating the Digital Age,” with a particular
focus on the potential offered by drone technology.
• The study of isotopes is illustrated with a new case study on the Norse
settlement of Greenland in Chapter 6.
• The rapid progress of DNA analysis is reflected throughout this fourth
edition, with expanded sections on ancient DNA (aDNA) in Chapters 8 and 10.
• In Chapter 11, the increasing threat posed to the material record by
ideological extremism is examined through the destruction of Palmyra
by so-called Islamic State (IS), alongside the Taliban’s earlier demolition
of the sandstone Buddhas at Bamiyan, Afghanistan.
In addition, this new edition of Archaeology Essentials includes a range of recent

ground-breaking archaeological investigations, for instance the Cultural
Resource Management (CRM) work conducted at Hohokam sites in Arizona,
along with new and updated case studies on such sites as Mississippian Spiro
in Oklahoma, the pyramids of Giza in Egypt, and Must Farm in eastern England.
Student and Instructor Resources

Fully revised student and instructor materials for this fourth edition of
Archaeology Essentials are found on the website to accompany the book:
http://college.thameshudsonusa.com/college/archaeologyessentials4.
Readers outside North America should email education@thameshudson.co.uk
for further information. Archaeology Essentials is also available as an ebook.
Resources for Students

Students benefit from a variety of resources designed to complement the
knowledge and skills provided by Archaeology Essentials:
8 Preface
• InQuizitive, a powerful adaptive learning tool available for the first
time in archaeology, and free to use with Archaeology Essentials at:
http://digital.wwnorton.com/archess4. Developed specifically for
introductory archaeology courses, this self-testing tool offers interactive,
visually led questions that adapt to students’ current knowledge.
• Active Archaeology Notebook, available free with purchase of a new copy
of Archaeology Essentials by prior arrangement with your Norton sales rep.
Written by a team of instructors from the SAA Curriculum Committee led
by Leah McCurdy, each activity applies a key concept in archaeology and has
been tried and tested in archaeology classrooms. Activities are accompanied
by online guidance notes for instructors explaining how they can be linked
to learning objectives, contribute to students’ grades, and build fun and
effective in-class activities.
• Flashcards of terminological definitions to aid students’ learning.
• An online glossary that provides easy access to key terms.
Resources for Instructors

Instructors who adopt this fourth edition of Archaeology Essentials can get free
access to a range of tools to enhance teaching and learning:
• To create visually engaging lectures, the Archaeology Global Gallery offers
instructors a collection of hundreds of images not included in the book,
sourced from museums, Thames & Hudson archives, and from fellow
archaeologists, all carefully categorized and captioned. It can be accessed at:
http://college.thameshudsonusa.com/college/archaeologyessentials4.
• A range of videos exploring ancient sites and featuring interviews with
Professor Colin Renfrew and Dr. Kelly Knudson on key topics in archaeology.
• A test bank with over 400 multiple choice, true/false, and essay questions.
• PowerPoint lectures to help structure and organize teaching.
• Images and diagrams from Archaeology Essentials as JPEGs and PowerPoints.
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our thanks to all those who have provided feedback,
reviewed sections of the book, or otherwise helped in the updating of the
text and illustrations for this edition: David Aftandilian, Texas Christian
University; Lynda Carroll, Binghampton University; Matt Douglass, University
of Nebraska-Lincoln; Matthew Johnson, Northwestern University; Timothy
Kaiser, Lakehead University; Daniel Kreutzer, Metropolitan State University;
Matthew Liebmann, Harvard University; Pamela A. Maack, PhD, San Jacinto
College-Central; Heather McKillop, Louisiana State University; C. Jill Minar,
Fresno City College; Krysta Ryzewski, Wayne State University; Joshua
Samuels, The Catholic University of America; and Michael J. Shott, University
of Akron.
Preface 9
1 Searching for the Past
The History of Archaeology
Archaeology as a Discipline 11 The Development of Public

The Important Questions 15 Archaeology 33
Understanding the History ❑ Further Women Pioneers
of Archaeology 15 of Archaeology 34
Indigenous Archaeologies 35
The First Searchers:
The Speculative Phase 16
The First Excavations 17 Study Questions 36
Summary 37
The Beginnings of Modern Further Reading 37
Archaeology 18
The Antiquity of Humankind and
the Concept of Evolution 19
The Three Age System 20
Ethnography and Archaeology 20
Discovering the Early Civilizations 21
The Development of Field
Techniques 22
Classification and
Consolidation 25
The Ecological Approach 26
The Rise of Archaeological Science 27
A Turning Point in
Archaeology 27
The Birth of the New Archaeology 28
The Postprocessual Debate of the
1980s and 1990s 30
Pluralizing Pasts 32
About 5300 years ago, a forty-year-old man made his last journey on a
mountain path in the European Alps. He lay undisturbed until his body was
discovered in September 1991. Archaeologists were able to determine not
only his age, but also the contents of his last meal: meat (probably ibex and
venison), plants, wheat, and plums. The Iceman suffered from arthritis, and
analysis of a fingernail showed that he had suffered serious illness before he
died. At first it was thought that he died from exhaustion in a fog or blizzard.
Later analysis, however, revealed what may be an arrowhead in his left shoulder
and cuts on his hands, wrists, and ribcage, as well as a blow to the head, so he
may well have died a violent death. These observations are just a sample of
what archaeologists were able to learn about this long-dead man (see pp. 54–55).
The thrill of discovery and the ability of archaeology to reveal at least some
of the secrets of our past have been the theme of many famous novels and
movies, notably Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones series. But although many
discoveries in archaeology are far less spectacular than either the Iceman or
those represented in fiction—perhaps a collection of broken pieces of pottery—
these kinds of remains too can tell us a lot about the past, through careful
collection and analysis of the evidence.
Archaeology is unique in its ability to tell us about the whole history
of humankind from its beginnings more than 3 million years ago. Indeed,
for more than 99 percent of that huge span of time, archaeology—the study
of past material culture—is the only source of information. It is the only way
that we can answer questions about the evolution of our species and the
developments in culture and society that led to the emergence of the first
civilizations and to the more recent societies that are founded upon them.
Archaeology as a Discipline
Many archaeologists consider themselves as part of the broader discipline
of anthropology. Anthropology in the most general sense is the study
of humanity: our physical characteristics as animals, and our unique
Archaeology as a Discipline 11
The diversity of modern
archaeology.
(Right) Urban archaeology:

excavation of a Roman site
in the heart of London.
(Below left) Working in the

on-site archaeobotanical
laboratory on finds from
Çatalhöyük in Turkey.
(Below right) In the

field in Siberia, an
ethnoarchaeologist
shares and studies the
lives of modern Oroqen
people, here making
blood sausages from the
intestines of a recently
butchered reindeer.
12 1 • Searching for the Past

(Right) Underwater
archaeology: a huge
Egyptian statue found in
the now-submerged ruins
of an ancient city near
Alexandria.
(Below left) An Inca

“mummy,” now known as
the “Ice Maiden,” is lifted
from her resting place
high up on the Ampato
volcano in Peru (see p. 56).
(Near left) Piecing together

fragments of an elaborate
mural from the early Maya site
of San Bartolo in Guatemala.
(Below right) Archaeologists

painstakingly excavate,
record, and reconstruct
some of the thousands of
“terracotta warriors” at the
tomb of the first emperor of
China, near the city of Xi’an
in Shaanxi province.
non-biological characteristics. Anthropology is thus a broad discipline—
so broad that it is often broken down into different fields:
• Physical or biological anthropology: the study of human biological or

physical characteristics and how they evolved.
• Cultural (or social) anthropology: the study of human culture and society.
• Linguistic anthropology: the study of how speech varies with social factors
and over time.
• Archaeology: the study of former societies through the remains of their
material culture and, in the case of such literate cultures as those of
Mesopotamia or Mesoamerica, such written records as have survived.
Archaeologists who are interested in the societies of ancient Greece and

Rome, their empires and neighboring territories, consider themselves
Classical archaeologists. They study the material remains of the Greek and
Roman worlds, but can also take into account the extensive written records
(literature, history, official records, and so on) that survive.
Similarly, biblical archaeologists work in much the same way as
anthropological archaeologists, but with reference to the events set out
in the Bible. Like history, archaeology is concerned with documenting and
understanding the human past, but archaeologists operate in a time frame
much larger than the periods studied by historians. Conventional historical
sources begin only with the introduction of written records in around
3000 bce in Western Asia, and much later in most other parts of the world
(not until 1788 ce in Australia, for example). The period before written records
and history (meaning the study of the past using written evidence) is known
as prehistory.
Although archaeologists spend much of their time studying artifacts and
buildings, it is worth emphasizing that archaeology is about the study of
humans and, in that sense, like history, it is a humanity. But although it uses
written history, it differs from the study of written history in a fundamental
way. Historical records make statements, offer opinions, and pass judgments
(even if those statements and judgments themselves need to be interpreted).
The objects that archaeologists discover, on the other hand, tell us nothing
directly in themselves. It is we today who have to make sense of these things.
In this respect the practice of archaeology is rather like a science. The scientist
collects data, conducts experiments, formulates a hypothesis (a proposition to
account for the data), tests the hypothesis against more data, and then devises
a model (a description that seems best to summarize the pattern observed in
the data). The archaeologist has to develop a picture of the past, just as the
scientist has to develop a coherent view of the natural world. It is not found
ready made.

Archaeology, in short, is a science as well as a humanity. That is one of its
fascinations as a discipline: it reflects the ingenuity of the modern scientist as
well as the modern historian. The technical methods of archaeological science
are the most obvious, from radiocarbon dating to studies of food residues in
pots. Equally important are scientific methods of analysis: archaeology is just
as much about the analytical concepts of the archaeologist as the instruments
in the laboratory. The illustrations on pp. 12–13 give some idea of the diversity
of the work that a modern-day archaeologist might be involved in.
The Important Questions

Because the evidence of archaeology cannot speak for itself, it is important
that archaeologists ask the right questions of the evidence. If the wrong
questions are asked, the wrong conclusions will be drawn. For example, early
explanations of the unexplained mounds found east of the Mississippi River
assumed that they could not have been built by the indigenous American
peoples of the region; it was believed instead that the mounds had been built
by a mythical and vanished race of Moundbuilders. As explained in more
detail below (p. 18), Thomas Jefferson, later in his career the third President
of the United States, decided to test this hypothesis against hard evidence
and dug a trench across a mound on his property. He was able to show that
the mound had been used as a burial place on many occasions and found no
evidence that it could not have been built by the indigenous peoples. In other
words, Jefferson asked questions about what the evidence suggested: he did
not simply reach a conclusion that fitted his prejudices and assumptions.
Traditional approaches tended to regard the objective of archaeology
mainly as reconstruction: piecing together the puzzle. But today it is not
enough simply to recreate the material culture of remote periods: how people
lived and how they exploited their environment. We also want to know why
they lived that way, why they had certain patterns of behavior, and how their
material culture came to take the form it did. We are interested, in short, in
explaining change.
Understanding the History of Archaeology

The history of archaeology is commonly seen as the history of great
discoveries: the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt, the lost Maya cities of Mexico,
the painted caves of the Paleolithic, such as Lascaux in France, or the remains
of our human ancestors buried deep in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. But
even more than that it is the story of how we have come to look with fresh
eyes at the material evidence for the human past, and with new methods to
aid us in our task.
It is important to remember that just a century and a half ago, most well-
read people in the Western world—where archaeology as we know it today was
first developed—believed that the world had been created only a few thousand
years earlier (in the year 4004 bce, according to the then-standard interpretation
of the Bible), and that all that could be known of the remote past had to be
gleaned from the earliest historians, notably those of the ancient Near East,
Egypt, and Greece. There was no awareness that any kind of coherent history
of the periods before the development of writing was possible at all.
But today we can indeed penetrate the depths of the remote past. This
is not simply because new discoveries are being made. It is because we
have learned to ask some of the right questions, and have developed some
of the right methods for answering them. The material evidence of the
archaeological record has been lying around for a long time. What is new is our
awareness that the methods of archaeology can give us information about the
past, even the prehistoric past (before the invention of writing). The history
of archaeology is therefore in the first instance a history of ideas, of theory,
of ways of looking at the past. Next it is a history of developing research
methods, employing those ideas, and investigating those questions.
And only thirdly is it a history of actual discoveries.
In this book it is the development of the questions and ideas that we shall
emphasize, and the application of new research methods. The main thing to
remember is that every view of the past is a product of its own time: ideas and
theories are constantly evolving, and so are methods. When we describe the
archaeological research methods of today we are simply speaking of one point
on the trajectory of the subject’s evolution. In a few decades’ or even a few
years’ time these methods will certainly look old-fashioned and out of date.
That is the dynamic nature of archaeology as a discipline.
The First Searchers: The Speculative Phase

Humans have always speculated about their past, and most cultures have
their own foundation myths to explain why society is how it is. Most cultures,
too, have been fascinated by the societies that preceded them. The Aztecs
exaggerated their Toltec ancestry, and were so interested in Teotihuacan—
the huge Mexican city abandoned hundreds of years earlier, which they
mistakenly linked with the Toltecs—that they incorporated ceremonial stone
masks from that site in the foundation deposits of their own Great Temple.
A rather more detached curiosity about the relics of bygone ages developed
in several other early civilizations, where scholars and even rulers collected
and studied objects from the past.
During the revival of learning in Europe known as the Renaissance
(fourteenth to seventeenth centuries), princes and people of refinement
began to form “cabinets of curiosities,” in which curios and ancient artifacts
were displayed rather haphazardly with exotic minerals and all manner
of specimens illustrative of what was called “natural history.” During the

Renaissance also, scholars began to study and collect the relics of ancient
Greece and Rome. And they began too in more northern lands to study the
local relics of their own remote past. At this time these were mainly the
field monuments—those conspicuous sites, often made of stone, which
immediately attracted attention, such as Stonehenge. Careful scholars, such
as the Englishman William Stukeley, made systematic studies of some of
these monuments, with accurate plans that are still useful today. Stukeley
and his colleagues successfully demonstrated that these monuments had
not been constructed by giants or devils, as suggested by such local names
as the Devil’s Arrows, but by people in antiquity. Stukeley was also successful
in phasing field monuments, demonstrating that, since Roman roads
intersected barrows, the former must have been built after the latter.
The First Excavations

In the eighteenth century more adventurous researchers initiated excavation
of some of the most prominent sites. The Roman city of Pompeii in Italy
was one of the first of these. Buried under meters of volcanic ash after
the cataclysmic eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius, Pompeii was only
The Roman city of Pompeii lies in the

shadow of Mount Vesuvius in Italy. When the
volcano erupted in 79 ce, the entire city was
buried, all but forgotten until excavations
began in the mid-eighteenth century. Such
spectacular discoveries generated huge
interest in the past, and greatly influenced
the arts.
rediscovered in 1748. Although to begin with the motivation of the excavators
“The First Excavation” was to find valuable ancient masterpieces, it was not long before published
finds from Pompeii were attracting enormous international attention,
Thomas Jefferson, later to become influencing styles of furniture and interior decoration, and even inspiring
President of the United States, several pieces of romantic fiction. Not until 1860, however, did well-recorded
conducted the “first scientific
excavations begin.
excavation” in Virginia in 1784
The credit for conducting what has been called “the first scientific
By carefully digging a trench excavation in the history of archaeology” traditionally goes to Thomas
across a Native American burial Jefferson, who in 1784 dug a trench or section across a burial mound on his
mound, Jefferson was able to property in Virginia. Jefferson’s work marks the beginning of the end of the
observe different layers and to draw
Speculative Phase.
reasoned conclusions from the data
In Jefferson’s time people were speculating that the hundreds of
unexplained mounds known east of the Mississippi River had been built
not by the indigenous Americans, but by a mythical and vanished race of
“Moundbuilders.” Jefferson adopted what today we would call a scientific
approach, that is, he tested ideas about the mounds against hard evidence—
by excavating one of them. His methods were careful enough to allow him to
recognize different layers (or stratigraphy) in his trench, and to see that the
many human bones present were less well preserved in the lower layers. From
this he deduced that the mound had been reused as a place of burial on many
separate occasions. Although Jefferson admitted, rightly, that more evidence
was needed to resolve the Moundbuilder question, he saw no reason why
ancestors of the present-day Native Americans themselves could not have
raised the mounds.
Jefferson was ahead of his time. His sound approach—logical deduction
from carefully excavated evidence, in many ways the basis of modern
archaeology—was not taken up by any of his immediate successors in North
America. In Europe, meanwhile, extensive excavations were being conducted,
for instance by the Englishman Sir Richard Colt Hoare, who dug into hundreds
of burial mounds in southern Britain during the first decade of the nineteenth
century. None of these excavations, however, did much to advance the cause
of knowledge about the distant past, since their interpretation was still within
the biblical framework, which insisted on a short span for human existence.
The Beginnings of Modern Archaeology

It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that the discipline of
archaeology became truly established. Already in the background there were
the significant achievements of the newly developed science of geology. The
study of the stratification of rocks (their arrangement in superimposed layers
or strata) established principles that were to be the basis of archaeological
excavation, as foreshadowed by Jefferson. It was demonstrated that the
stratification of rocks was due to processes that were still going on in

(Above) Early excavations: Sir Richard Colt seas, rivers, and lakes. This was the principle of uniformitarianism: that
Hoare and William Cunnington direct a dig
north of Stonehenge in 1805.
geologically ancient conditions were in essence similar to, or “uniform with,”
those of our own time, introduced by the great geologist Sir Charles Lyell.
(Below) Charles Darwin caricatured as
This idea could be applied to the human past also, and it marks one of the
an ape, published in 1874. The drawing fundamental notions of modern archaeology: that in many ways the past
was captioned with a line from William
Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost:
was much like the present.
“This is the ape of form.”
The Antiquity of Humankind and the Concept of Evolution
These advances in geology did much to lay the groundwork for what
was one of the most significant events in the intellectual history of
the nineteenth century (and an indispensable one for the discipline
of archaeology): the establishment of the antiquity of humankind. It had
become widely agreed that Earth’s origins extended far back into a remote
past, so that the biblical notion of the creation of the world and all its
contents just a few thousand years before our own time could no longer
be accepted. The possibility of a prehistory of humankind, indeed the need
for one, was established.
This harmonized well with the findings of Charles Darwin, whose
fundamental work, On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, established
the concept of evolution to explain the origin and development of all plants
and animals. The idea of evolution itself was not new—earlier scholars had
suggested that living things must have changed or evolved through the
ages. What Darwin demonstrated was how this change occurred. The key
mechanism was, in Darwin’s words, “natural selection,” or the survival of
the fittest. In the struggle for existence, environmentally better-adapted
individuals of a particular species would survive (or be “naturally selected”),
The Beginnings of Modern Archaeology 19

whereas less well-adapted ones would die. The surviving individuals would
Key Early Advances pass on their advantageous traits to their offspring and gradually the
characteristics of a species would change to such an extent that a new species
The rejection of a literal emerged. This was the process of evolution. The implications were clear: that
interpretation of the biblical the human species had emerged as part of this same process. The search for
account of early human history
human origins in the material record, using the techniques of archaeology,
and the establishment of the
antiquity of humankind could begin.
Darwin’s work on evolution also had an immediate impact on
Charles Darwin’s theories of archaeologists who were laying the foundations for the study of artifacts
evolution and natural selection and how they develop over time. But his influence on social thinkers and
anthropologists has been even more significant. The principles of evolution
The establishment of the Three Age
System that divided prehistory into can also be applied to social organization, for culture can be seen as learned
a Stone Age followed by a Bronze and passed on between generations, albeit in a more general way than in
Age and an Iron Age biological evolution.
The development of archaeological

The Three Age System
field techniques
As we have noted, some archaeological techniques, notably those in the field
of excavation, were already being developed. So too was another conceptual
device that proved very useful for the progress of European prehistory: the
Three Age System. As early as 1808, Colt Hoare had recognized a sequence of
stone, “brass,” and iron artifacts within the barrows he excavated, but this was
first systematically studied in the 1830s by the Danish scholar C.J. Thomsen.
He proposed that prehistoric artifacts could be divided into those coming
from a Stone Age, a Bronze Age, and an Iron Age, and this classification was
soon found useful by scholars throughout Europe. Later a division in the
Stone Age was established—between the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age and
the Neolithic or New Stone Age.
These terms were less applicable to Africa, where bronze was not used
south of the Sahara, or to the Americas, where bronze was less important and
iron was not in use before the European conquest. But it was conceptually
significant. The Three Age System established the principle that by studying
and classifying prehistoric artifacts, they could be ordered chronologically.
Archaeology was moving beyond mere speculation about the past, and
becoming instead a discipline involving careful excavation and the systematic
study of the artifacts unearthed. Although superseded by modern dating
methods, the Three Age System remains one of the fundamental divisions
of archaeological materials today.
Ethnography and Archaeology

Another important strand in the thought of the time was the realization
that the study by ethnographers of living communities in different parts
of the world could be a useful starting point for archaeologists seeking to

understand something of the lifestyles of their own early native inhabitants,
who clearly had comparably simple tools and crafts. For example, as early as
the sixteenth century, contact with native communities in North America
provided antiquarians and historians with models for tattooed images of
Celts and Britons.
Soon ethnographers and anthropologists were themselves producing
schemes of human progress. Strongly influenced by Darwin’s ideas about
evolution, the British anthropologist Edward Tylor and his American
counterpart Lewis Henry Morgan both published important works in the
1870s arguing that human societies had evolved from a state of savagery
(primitive hunting) through barbarism (simple farming) to civilization
(the highest form of society). Morgan’s work was partly based on his great
knowledge of living Native Americans.
Frederick Catherwood’s accurate,

Discovering the Early Civilizations
if somewhat romantic, drawing of a stela By the 1880s, then, many of the ideas underlying modern archaeology had
at Copan; at the time of his visit to the
site, in 1840, Maya glyphs had not been
been developed. But these ideas themselves took shape against a background
deciphered. of major nineteenth-century discoveries of ancient civilizations in the Old
World and the New.
The splendors of ancient Egyptian civilization had already been brought
to the attention of an avid public after Napoleon’s military expedition there
of 1798–1800. It was the discovery by one of his soldiers of the Rosetta Stone
that eventually provided the key to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphic
writing. Inscribed on the stone were parallel texts written in both Egyptian
and Greek scripts. The Frenchman Jean-François Champollion used this
bilingual inscription finally to decipher the hieroglyphs in 1822, after fourteen
years’ work. A similar piece of brilliant scholarly detection helped unlock
the secrets of cuneiform writing, the script used for many languages in
ancient Mesopotamia.
Egypt and the Near East also held a fascination for the American lawyer
and diplomat John Lloyd Stephens, but it was in the New World that he was to
make his name. His travels in Yucatan, Mexico, with the English artist Frederick
Catherwood, and the superbly illustrated books they produced together in
the early 1840s, revealed for the first time to an enthusiastic public the ruined
cities of the ancient Maya. Unlike contemporary researchers in North America,
who continued to argue for a vanished white race of Moundbuilders as the
architects of the earthworks there, Stephens rightly believed that the Maya
monuments were, in his own words, “the creation of the same races who
inhabited the country at the time of the Spanish conquest.” Stephens also
noted that there were similar hieroglyphic inscriptions at the different sites,
which led him to argue for Maya cultural unity—but no Champollion was to
emerge to decipher the glyphs until the 1960s.

(Right) General Pitt-Rivers, excavator of
Cranborne Chase, and pioneer in recording
techniques.
(Far right) Pitt-Rivers’s meticulous plan

of a barrow on Cranborne Chase.
The Development of Field Techniques

It was only in the late nineteenth century that a sound methodology of
scientific excavation began to be generally adopted. From that time some
major figures stand out, who in their various ways have helped create the
modern field methods we use today.
General Augustus Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers, for much of his life a professional
soldier, brought long experience of military methods, survey, and precision
to impeccably organized excavations on his estates in southern England.
Plans, sections, and even models were made, and the exact position of every
object was recorded. He was not concerned with retrieving beautiful treasures,
but with recovering all objects, no matter how mundane. He was a pioneer
in his insistence on total recording, and his four privately printed volumes,
describing his excavations on Cranborne Chase from 1887 to 1898, represent
the highest standards of archaeological publication.
Dorothy Garrod, one of the first to study
A younger contemporary of Pitt-Rivers, Sir William Flinders Petrie was
the prehistoric Near East systematically. likewise noted for his meticulous excavations and his insistence on the
collection and description of everything found, not just the fine objects, as
well as on full publication. He employed these methods in his exemplary
excavations in Egypt, and later in Palestine, from the 1880s until his death.
In 1937 Dorothy Garrod became the first woman professor in any subject at
Cambridge, and probably the first woman prehistorian to achieve professorial
status anywhere in the world. Her ground-breaking excavations at Zarzi in Iraq
and Mount Carmel in Palestine provided the key to a large section of the Near
East, from the Middle Paleolithic to the Mesolithic, and her find of the fossil
skull of a Neanderthal child in 1925 became crucial to the understanding of the
relationship between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. And with her discovery
of the Natufian culture, the predecessor of the world’s first farming societies,
she posed a series of new problems still not fully resolved today.

Flinders Petrie outside the tomb in which
he lived in Giza, Egypt, in the early 1880s.
Sir Mortimer Wheeler fought in the British army in both world wars and,
like Pitt-Rivers, brought military precision to his excavations, notably through
such techniques as the grid-square method of dividing and digging a site. He is
particularly well known for his work at British hillforts, notably Maiden Castle.
Equally outstanding, however, was his achievement as Director-General of the
Archaeological Survey of India, where he held training schools in modern field
methods, and excavated at many important sites.
Sir Mortimer Wheeler (below), and

his excavation at Arikamedu, India,
in 1945 (right).

(Right) Kathleen Kenyon was a great Kathleen Kenyon trained on
excavator who worked at two of the
most important and complex sites in Roman sites in Britain under Sir
the Near East, Jericho and Jerusalem. Mortimer Wheeler, and adopted
and developed his method, with its
close control over stratigraphy. She
subsequently applied this approach
in the Near East at two of the most
(Below) Julio Tello, arguably the
complex and most excavated sites
greatest Native American social scientist in Palestine: Jericho and Jerusalem.
of the twentieth century—he was a
Quechua Indian—and the father of
At Jericho, in 1952–58, she found
Peruvian archaeology. evidence that pushed back the date
of occupation to the end of the Ice
Age, and uncovered the walled village of the Neolithic farming community
commonly referred to as “the earliest town in the world.”
Julio Tello, “America’s first indigenous archaeologist,” was born and worked
in Peru, began his career with studies in Peruvian linguistics, and qualified as
a medical doctor before taking up anthropology. He did much to awaken an
awareness of the archaeological heritage of Peru, and was the first to recognize
the importance of the key site of Chavín de Huantar and indeed of such other
major sites as Sechín Alto, Cerro Sechín, and Wari. He was one of the first to
stress the autonomous rise of civilization in Peru, and he also founded the
Peruvian National Museum of Archaeology.
Alfred Kidder was the leading Americanist of his time. As well as being a
major figure in Maya archaeology, he was largely responsible for putting the
Southwest on the archaeological map with his excavations at Pecos Ruin,
Alfred Kidder (below left) and his cross-
sectional drawing of the stratigraphy at
a large pueblo in northern New Mexico, from 1915 to 1929. His survey of the
the Pecos pueblo site (below right). region, An Introduction to the Study of Southwestern Archaeology (1924), has become

a classic. Kidder was one of the first archaeologists to use a team of specialists
to help analyze artifacts and human remains. He is also important for his
“blueprint” for a regional strategy: (1) reconnaissance; (2) selection of criteria
for ranking the remains of sites chronologically; (3) organizing them into a
probable sequence; (4) stratigraphic excavation to elucidate specific problems;
followed by (5) more detailed regional survey and dating.
Classification and Consolidation

As we have seen, well before the end of the nineteenth century many of the
principal features of modern archaeology had been established and many
of the early civilizations had been discovered. There now ensued a period,
lasting until about 1960, that has been described as the “classificatory-
historical period.” Its central concern was chronology. Much effort went
into the establishment of regional chronologies, and the description of the
development of culture in each area.
It was scholars studying the prehistoric societies of Europe and North
America who made some of the most significant contributions to the subject.
In the United States there was a close link between anthropologists and
archaeologists studying the Native Americans. The anthropologist Franz
Boas reacted against the broad evolutionary schemes of his predecessors
and demanded much greater attention to the collection and classification
Professor Gordon Childe at the site of the
Neolithic settlement at Skara Brae, Orkney,
of information in the field. Huge inventories of cultural traits, such as pot
Scotland, in 1930. and basket designs or types of moccasins, were built up. This tied in with the
so-called “direct historical approach” of the archaeologists, who attempted
to trace modern Native American pottery and other styles “directly” back into
the distant past. By the 1930s the number of separate regional sequences was
so great that a group of scholars led by W.C. McKern devised what became
known as the Midwestern Taxonomic System, which correlated sequences
in the Midwest by identifying similarities between artifact collections.
Meanwhile, Gordon Childe, a brilliant Australian based in Britain and a
leading thinker and writer about European prehistory, had almost single-
handedly been making comparisons of this sort between prehistoric
sequences in Europe. Both his methods and the Midwestern Taxonomic
System were designed to order the material, to answer: To what period do
these artifacts date? And also: With which other materials do they belong?
This latter question usually carried with it an assumption that Childe made
explicit: that a constantly recurring collection or assemblage of artifacts
(a “culture” in his terminology) could be attributed to a particular group
of people. This approach thus offered the hope of answering, in a very general
sense, the question: To whom did these artifacts belong?
But Childe went beyond merely describing and correlating the culture
sequences, and attempted to account for their origin. In the late nineteenth
Classification and Consolidation 25

century scholars had argued that all the attributes of civilization, from stone
architecture to metal weapons, had spread or “diffused” to Europe from the
Near East by trade or migration of people. With the much greater range of
evidence available to him, Childe modified this approach and argued that
Europe had undergone some indigenous development—but he nevertheless
attributed the major cultural changes to Near Eastern influences.
Later Childe went on to try and answer the much more difficult question:
Why had civilization arisen in the Near East? Himself influenced by Marxist
ideas and the relatively recent Marxist revolution in Russia, he proposed that
there had been a Neolithic Revolution that gave rise to the development
of farming, and later an Urban Revolution, which led to the first towns and
cities. Childe was one of the few archaeologists of his generation bold enough
to address this whole broad issue of why things happened or changed in the
past. Most of his contemporaries were more concerned with establishing
chronologies and cultural sequences. But after World War II scholars with
new ideas began to challenge conventional approaches.
The Ecological Approach

One of the most influential new thinkers in North America was the
anthropologist Julian Steward. Like Childe he was interested in explaining
cultural change, but he brought to the question an anthropologist’s
understanding of how living cultures work. Moreover he highlighted
the fact that cultures do not interact simply with each other, but with
Key Developments
the environment as well. Steward christened the study of ways in which
The early twentieth-century adaptation to the environment could cause cultural change “cultural
establishment of regional ecology.” Perhaps the most direct archaeological impact of these ideas can
chronologies and sequences be seen in the work of Gordon Willey, one of Steward’s graduate associates,
of artifacts
who carried out a pioneering investigation in the Virú Valley, Peru, in the
The development of scientific late 1940s. This study of some 1500 years of pre-Columbian occupation
aids for archaeology, notably involved a combination of observations from detailed maps and aerial
radiocarbon dating photographs, survey at ground level, and excavation and surface potsherd
collection to establish dates for the hundreds of prehistoric sites identified.
The post-World War II development
Willey then plotted the geographical distribution of these many sites in
of an environmental or ecological
explanation for past change the valley at different periods and set the results against the changing
local environment.
Increasing collaboration with Quite independently of Steward, however, the British archaeologist
specialists in other disciplines, Grahame Clark developed an ecological approach with even more direct
such as animal or plant studies
relevance for archaeological fieldwork. Breaking away from the artifact-
Gordon Childe’s bold questioning dominated culture-historical approach of his contemporaries, he argued that
of why things happened or changed by studying how human populations adapted to their environments we can
in the past understand many aspects of ancient society. Collaboration with new kinds
of specialists was essential: for example, specialists who could identify animal

bones or plant remains in the archaeological record could help build up
a picture not only of what prehistoric environments were like, but also what
foods prehistoric peoples ate.
The Rise of Archaeological Science

The other striking development of the period immediately after World War
II was the rapid development of scientific aids for archaeology. We have
already seen how pioneers of the ecological approach forged an alliance with
specialists from the environmental sciences. Even more important, however,
was the application to archaeology of the physical and chemical sciences.
The greatest breakthrough came in the field of dating. In 1949 the
American chemist Willard Libby announced his invention of radiocarbon
dating. It was not until well over a decade later that the full impact of this
momentous technical achievement began to be felt, but the implications were
clear: here at last archaeologists might have a means of directly determining
the age of undated sites and finds anywhere in the world without complicated
cross-cultural comparisons. Traditionally, prehistoric Europe had been dated
by supposed contacts with early Greece and hence (indirectly) with ancient
Egypt, which could itself be dated historically. The radiocarbon method
now promised a completely independent chronology for ancient Europe.
It also meant that to establish a date was no longer one of the main end
products of research. It was still important, but it could now be done much
more efficiently, allowing the archaeologist to go on to ask more challenging
questions than merely chronological ones.
Archaeological applications for scientific techniques now include plant
and animal studies, and methods for analyzing human remains and artifacts.
Over the past decade developments in biochemistry and molecular genetics
have led to the emergence of the new disciplines of molecular archaeology and
archaeogenetics. Sensitive techniques in the field of chemistry are beginning
to allow the precise identification of organic residues and are giving fresh
insights into both diet and nutrition. The study of DNA (deoxyribonucleic
acid), both modern and ancient, has offered novel approaches to the study of
human evolution, and is now beginning to give the study of plant and animal
domestication a systematic, molecular basis.
A Turning Point in Archaeology

The 1960s mark a turning point in the development of archaeology. By this
time some archaeologists were dissatisfied with the way research in the
subject was being conducted. These dissatisfactions were not so much
with excavation techniques, or with the newly developed scientific aids
in archaeology, but with the way conclusions were drawn from them—
how archaeologists explain things.
A Turning Point in Archaeology 27

The fundamental cause for dissatisfaction with the traditional
archaeology was that it never seemed to explain anything, other than in
terms of migrations of peoples and supposed “influences.” Already in 1948
the American archaeologist Walter W. Taylor had argued for an approach that
would take into consideration the full range of a culture system. And in 1958
Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips argued for a greater emphasis on the social
aspect, for a broader study of the general processes at work in culture history
(a “processual interpretation”).
That was all very well, but what would it mean in practice?
The Birth of the New Archaeology

In the United States the answer was provided, at least in part, by a group
of younger archaeologists, led by Lewis Binford, who set out to offer a new
approach to the problems of archaeological interpretation, which was soon
dubbed the New Archaeology. Binford and his colleagues argued against
trying to use archaeological data to write a kind of “counterfeit history.”
They maintained that the potential of the archaeological evidence was much
greater than had been realized for the investigation of social and economic
aspects of past societies. It was a more optimistic view than that of many
of their predecessors.
They also argued that archaeological reasoning should be made explicit.
Conclusions should be based not simply on the authority of the scholar
making the interpretation, but on an explicit framework of logical argument.
Thus conclusions, if they are to be considered valid, must be open to testing.
These advocates of processual archaeology sought to explain rather than
Lewis Binford, the founder of the “New
Archaeology,” lecturing on his work among
simply to describe, and to do so, as in all sciences, by seeking to make valid
the Nunamiut hunters of Alaska. generalizations (induction). They tried to avoid the rather vague talk of the
“influences” of one culture upon another, but rather to analyze a culture as a
system that could be broken down into subsystems (such as technology, trade,
or ideology), which could be studied in their own right. They placed much less
emphasis on artifact typology (a sequence of design styles) and classification.
In order to fulfill these aims, the New Archaeologists to a large extent
turned away from the approaches of history toward those of the sciences.
There was a great willingness to employ more sophisticated quantitative
techniques and to draw on ideas from other disciplines, notably geography.
In their enthusiasm to use a battery of new techniques and analytical
tools, the New Archaeologists drew also on a range of previously unfamiliar
vocabularies, which their critics tended to dismiss as jargon. Indeed in recent
years, several critics have reacted against some of those aspirations to be
scientific. But there can be no doubt that archaeology will never be the same
again. Most researchers today, even the critics of the early New Archaeology,
implicitly recognize its influence when they agree that it is indeed the goal

Key Concepts
Processual Archaeology
In the early days of the New Archaeology, its principal exponents were very
conscious of the limitations of the older, traditional archaeology. The following
contrasts were among those that they often emphasized:
The Nature of Archaeology: Research Focus:

Explanatory vs Descriptive Project Design vs Data
Archaeology’s role was now to Accumulation
explain past change, not simply to Research should be designed
reconstruct the past and how people to answer specific questions
had lived. This involved the use of economically, not simply to generate
explicit theory more information, which might not
be relevant
Explanation:
Culture Process vs Culture History Choice of Approach:
Traditional archaeology was seen Quantitative vs Simply Qualitative
to rely on historical explanation: the Quantitative data allowed
New Archaeology, drawing on computerized statistical treatment,
the philosophy of science, would with the possibility of sampling
think in terms of culture process, and significance testing. This was
of how changes in economic and often preferred to the purely verbal
social systems take place. This traditional approach
implies generalization
Scope:
Reasoning: Optimism vs Pessimism
Deductive vs Inductive Traditional archaeologists often
Instead of the traditional task stressed that archaeological
of “piecing together the past,” data were not well suited to the
like a jigsaw puzzle, the appropriate reconstruction of social organization
procedure was now to formulate or cognitive systems. The New
hypotheses, constructing models, Archaeologists were more positive,
and deducing their consequences and argued that it would never be
known how hard these problems
Validation: were until archaeologists had tried
Testing vs Authority to solve them
Hypotheses were to be tested, and
conclusions should not be accepted
on the basis of the authority or
standing of the research worker
of archaeology to explain what happened in the past as well as simply

to describe it. Most of them agree too that in order to practice good
archaeology it is necessary to make explicit, and then to examine,
our underlying assumptions.

Increasingly also there has been a readiness to apply the techniques of
archaeological investigation to more recent times. In the United States James
Deetz made significant contributions, and, more widely, medieval archaeology
and industrial archaeology are now recognized fields.
The Postprocessual Debate of the 1980s and 1990s

Postmodernist currents of thought in the 1980s and 1990s encouraged a great
diversity of approaches to the past. While many field archaeologists were
relatively untouched by theoretical debates, and the processual tradition
established by the New Archaeology rolled on, there were several new
approaches, sometimes collectively termed postprocessual archaeology,
which dealt with interesting and difficult questions.
Influential arguments, some of them first advanced by the archaeologist
Ian Hodder and his students, have stressed that there is no single, correct
way to undertake archaeological inference, and that the goal of objectivity
is unattainable. They argued that archaeological interpretation can be
underpinned by social and political bias, which the ideal of objectivism only
works to obscure. This well-justified critique of the scientism of the early
New Archaeology sometimes overlooks more recent developments in
scientific methodology. It can also lead to charges of relativism, where
one person’s view has to be taken to be as good as another’s, and where,
in interpretive matters, “anything goes.”
For its early proponents, postprocessual archaeology represented so
radical a critique of processual archaeology as to establish a new beginning
in archaeological theory. Others, however, saw postprocessualism as simply
a development of some of the ideas and theoretical problems introduced
by the New Archaeology. The term interpretive archaeologies (plural) has
been suggested as a more positive label than postprocessual.
The majority of postprocessual approaches used in more recent times
are less aggressively anti-scientific, and the emphasis has instead been
upon the use of a variety of personal and often humanistic insights to
develop a range of different fields and interests, recognizing the varied
perspectives of different social groups. Ian Hodder’s work at the early
farming site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey provides a good example of this
approach in action. It is now recognized that there is no single or coherent
postprocessual archaeology, but rather a whole series of interpretive
approaches and interests.
One of the strengths of the interpretive approach is to bring into central
focus the actions and thoughts of individuals in the past. It argues that in
order to understand and interpret the past, it is necessary to “get inside the
minds” and think the thoughts of the people in question. This might seem
a logical goal when examining symbolic systems (for example figurative

Key Concepts
Interpretive or Postprocessual Archaeologies
Postprocessualism is a collective term for a number of approaches to the past,

all of which have roots in the post-modernist current of thought that developed
in the 1980s and 1990s
The neo-Marxist element has The praxis (or practice) approach

a strong commitment to social lays stress upon the central
awareness: that it is the duty of the role of the human “agent” and
archaeologist not only to describe upon the primary significance
the past, but also to use such insights of human actions (praxis) in
to change the present world. This shaping social structure. Many
contrasts quite strikingly with the social norms and social structures
aspirations towards objectivity of are established and shaped by
many processual archaeologists habitual experience (and the notion
of habitus similarly refers to the
The post-positivist approach rejects unspoken strategy-generating
the emphasis on the systematic principles employed by the
procedures of scientific method individual, which mediate between
that are such a feature of processual social structure and practice). The
archaeology, sometimes seeing role of the individual as a significant
modern science as hostile to the agent is thus emphasized
individual, as forming an integral
part of the “systems of domination” The hermeneutic (or interpretive)
by which the forces of capitalism view rejects generalization, another
exert their “hegemony” feature of processual archaeology.
Emphasis is laid, rather, upon the
The phenomenological approach uniqueness of each society and
lays stress on the personal culture and on the need to study
experiences of the individual and the full context of each in all its
on the way in which encounters rich diversity. A related view
with the material world and with the stresses that there can be no
objects in it shape our understanding single correct interpretation:
of the world. In landscape each observer or analyst is entitled
archaeology, for example, the to his or her own opinion about the
archaeologist sets out to experience past. There will therefore be
the humanly shaped landscape as a diversity of opinions, and a wide
it has been modified and formed range of perspectives—which is
by human activities why the emphasis is on interpretive
archaeologies (plural)
artworks employing a complex iconography) but there is in reality no easy

way to get into other people’s minds, especially past minds. Nevertheless,
in Chapter 9 we examine some of the ways in which we can start to answer
the question: What did they think?

Whatever the methodological problems, the consequence of the various
debates has been to broaden the range of archaeological theory in a positive
manner and to emphasize the symbolic and cognitive aspects of human
endeavor in a way that the early New Archaeology failed to do.
Pluralizing Pasts
The postprocessual archaeologists are certainly right in arguing that our
own interpretation and presentation of the past involve choices that depend
less on an objective assessment of the data than on the feelings and opinions
of the researchers and of the clients whom they aim to please. The great
national museum of the United States, the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington, D.C., found it almost impossible to mount an exhibition
in 1995 dealing with the destruction of Hiroshima fifty years earlier,
without exciting the anger both of ex-servicemen and of those respectful
of Japanese sensibilities.
It is evident that archaeology cannot avoid being caught up in and
influenced by the issues of the day, social and political as well as intellectual.
An example is the influence of feminist thinking and the growth of feminist
archaeology, which overlaps with the field of gender studies. A pioneer in the
emphasis of the importance of women in prehistory was Marija Gimbutas.
Her research in the Balkans led her to create a vision of an “Old Europe”
associated with the first farmers whose central focus was (or so she
argued) a belief in a great Mother Goddess figure. Although many feminist
archaeologists today would take issue with certain aspects of Gimbutas’s
approach, she has certainly helped foster the current debate on gender roles.
In an article of 1984, Margaret Conkey and Janet Spector drew attention to
the androcentrism (male bias) of the discipline of archaeology. As Margaret
Conkey pointed out, there existed a need “to reclaim women’s experience
as valid, to theorize this experience, and to use this to build a program of
political action.”
The deeply pervasive nature of androcentric thinking in most
interpretations of the past should not be underestimated: the gender-specific
terminology of “Man the Toolmaker,” even when swept away with every
reference to “mankind” corrected to “humankind,” does in fact conceal further,
widely held assumptions or prejudices—for instance that Paleolithic stone
tools were mainly made by men rather than women, for which there is little
or no evidence.
The box overleaf profiles a number of eminent female archaeologists
(in addition to Dorothy Garrod and Kathleen Kenyon, whose pioneering
fieldwork is described above, pp. 22–24) who have made important
contributions to the discipline, but feminist archaeologists can with
justice point to the persistent imbalances between female and male

professionals among archaeologists today; the goal of “political action”
may be seen as justified by current social realities. In the 1990s feminist
concern over androcentrism became one voice among many questioning
the supposed objectivity and political neutrality of archaeology. Today,
it is common practice to acknowledge the voices and interests of multiple
stakeholders in the past, including postcolonial perspectives, local
communities, and indigenous archaeology (see below, pp. 35–36).
The Development of Public Archaeology

A further turning point came during the later twentieth century with the
development of public archaeology—that is to say, archaeology supported
through resources made available as a public obligation. This came with
the growing realization that the potential knowledge about the historic
(or prehistoric) past embedded in the archaeological record—the material
remains of that past—is a resource of public importance, both nationally and
internationally, and that the destruction of that past without adequate record
should be prevented.
From these realizations came the widespread acceptance that these
material remains of the past should be protected and conserved. Moreover,
if commercial development sometimes required damage or destruction to that
resource, steps should be taken to mitigate that damage through conservation
and through recording. There are three key principles here:
• The material record of the past is a public resource that should be managed
for the public good.
• When practical circumstances make inevitable some damage to the material
record, steps should be taken to mitigate the impact through appropriate
survey, excavation, and research.
• The developer pays: the persons or organizations initiating the eventual
impact (usually through building works undertaken for economic reasons)
should fund the necessary actions in mitigation.
The nations of the world have in practice developed different legal frameworks
to deal with these problems. They vary from country to country. In France the
approach is termed preventive archaeology, in Britain rescue archaeology,
and in the United States Cultural Resource Management (CRM).
These issues are worth emphasizing. In those countries with legislation
protecting the material record of the past, a large proportion of the resources
devoted toward archaeology come through these practices of conservation and
mitigation, as governed by national legislation. The protective system in place
is influential for the way archaeology is conducted and for the way students
are trained. We return to these important issues in Chapter 12.

Further Women Harriet Boyd Hawes
This well-educated American majored
Pioneers of in Classics and was fluent in Greek. Just
Archaeology after graduating, in her early twenties,
she spent several seasons riding around
Crete on muleback, in dangerous
territory, alone or in the company of a
woman friend, looking for prehistoric
sites. In 1901 she discovered the Bronze
In the history of archaeology we have Age site of Gournia—the first Minoan
met Dorothy Garrod and Kathleen town site ever unearthed—which she
Kenyon, who are only two of many excavated for the next three years,
early female archaeologists who supervising a hundred local workmen.
achieved success against a backdrop She published her findings in exemplary
of exclusion, discrimination, and lack fashion in a lavishly illustrated report
of recognition and promotion. Through that is still consulted today.
the early history of archaeology many
brilliant academic women accepted Beatrice de Cardi
that, after marriage, professional Initially an assistant of Sir Mortimer (Above) Gertrude Caton-Thompson: her work
careers were no longer possible, and Wheeler, Beatrice de Cardi (1914–2016) at Great Zimbabwe confirmed that the site
was the work of a major African culture.
they were left to support the academic undertook field surveys in the Persian
work of their husbands with little public Gulf and Baluchistan and then in Qatar
recognition. This has remained so until and the United Arab Emirates. At the
the present time, so the achievements age of ninety-three she ceased active Gertrude Caton-Thompson
of the following pioneers, spanning the fieldwork and concentrated on writing. A wealthy British researcher who
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, are At the time of her death she was “the followed courses in prehistory and
all the more impressive and noteworthy. world’s oldest practicing archaeologist.” anthropology at Cambridge, Caton-
Thompson subsequently became
(Below) Harriet Boyd Hawes (in 1892), discoverer well known for her pioneering inter-
of the Minoan town site of Gournia, Crete. disciplinary project of survey and
excavation in the Faiyum of Egypt;
and later, perhaps most famously,
at Great Zimbabwe, where her
excavations in 1929 unearthed
datable artifacts from a stratified
context, and confirmed that the
site represented a major culture
of African origin.
(Near left) Beatrice de Cardi stated of her

fieldwork that “I have never had any difficulties....
I am not a woman or a man when I am working
in the Gulf or anywhere else. I am a professional
and [my colleagues] have always accepted that.”

(Above left) Anna O. Shepard was an (Above center) Tatiana
acknowledged expert in the ceramics of the Proskouriakoff: her work on Maya
American Southwest and Mesoamerica. glyphs contributed greatly to their
final decipherment.
Anna O. Shepard (Above right) Mary Leakey working on the
An American who studied archaeology fossilized hominin footprints at Laetoli, Tanzania.
as well as a wide range of hard
sciences, Shepard subsequently Tatiana Proskouriakoff Mary Leakey
became a specialist in ceramics, Born in Siberia, Proskouriakoff moved A cigar-smoking, whiskey-drinking,
as well as Mesoamerican and with her family to Pennsylvania in British archaeologist who, together
Southwestern archaeology. She was 1916. Unemployed after graduating as with her husband Louis, transformed
one of the pioneers of petrographic an architect in 1930 during the Great their chosen field. They worked for
analysis of archaeological pottery, Depression, she ended up working almost half a century at many sites in
focusing on sherd paste, paint, and as a museum artist in the University East Africa, most notably at Olduvai
temper. She published extensively on of Pennsylvania. A visit to the Maya Gorge, Tanzania, and at Laetoli, where
the technology of New World pottery, site of Piedras Negras led her to devote she excavated the famous trails of
and wrote a standard work, Ceramics the rest of her life to Maya architecture, fossilized hominin footprints, made
for the Archaeologist. art, and hieroglyphs. 3.7 million years ago.
Indigenous Archaeologies
Comparable questions have continued to emerge in the developing
indigenous archaeologies in former colonies, now freed from imperial power.
The appropriate policy for cultural heritage management, and indeed the very
nature of the cultural heritage itself, are often contested, sometimes along
ethnic lines. Marginalized groups, such as the Australian Aborigines, have
sought to attain greater influence in the heritage sphere, and have often found
their interests overlooked and misunderstood.
Deeper questions arise, however, about the nature of the globalization
process, itself the outcome of technological advances developed in the West,
and whether the very notion of cultural heritage, as commonly understood,
may not be a product of Western thought. The Western-conceived notion

of Cultural Heritage Management has been seen by postcolonial thinkers as
an imposition of Western values, with officially endorsed notions of heritage
perhaps leading to homogenization and the undervaluation of cultural
diversity. Even the UNESCO-sponsored listing of World Heritage Sites, from
the standpoint of this critique, is dominated by Western-formulated notions
of heritage.
While some aspects of archaeology at the beginning of the new millennium

were inevitably controversial, they were also in some ways very positive.
They emphasized the value and importance of the past for the contemporary
world, and they led to the realization that the cultural heritage is an
important part of the human environment, and can be as fragile as the natural
environment. They imply, then, that the archaeologist has an important
role to play in achieving a balanced view also of our present world, which
is inescapably the product of the worlds that have preceded it. The task of
interpretation is now seen as very much more complex than it once seemed.
Today, archaeology—once largely the preserve (and the product) of white,
upper class, European or North American males—has changed. Many active
archaeologists are women. All nationalities are represented. Indigenous
archaeologists play an increasing role. Yet the nineteenth- and twentieth-
century origins of the discipline are still all too evident today.
Study Questions
1 Why is the study of stratification important to archaeology?

2 Why was the invention of radiocarbon dating so momentous?
3 How did the New Archaeology differ from classificatory-historical
archaeology?
4 What are some postprocessual approaches to archaeology?
5 What is feminist archaeology?
6 Why has “public archaeology” become important in recent decades?

Summary
The hisTory of archaeology is a history of new ideas, methods, and discoveries.
Modern archaeology took root in the nineteenth century with the acceptance of
three key concepts: the great antiquity of humanity, Darwin’s principle of evolution,
and the Three Age System for ordering material culture. By the 1880s, many of the
early civilizations, especially in the Old World, had been discovered, and some of their
ancient scripts deciphered. This was followed by a long phase of consolidation—
of improvements in fieldwork and the establishment of regional chronologies.
afTer World War ii the pace of change in the discipline quickened. New
ecological approaches sought to help us understand human adaptation to the
environment. New scientific techniques introduced among other things reliable
means of dating the prehistoric past. The New Archaeology of the 1960s and 1970s
turned to questions not just of what happened when, but also why, in an attempt
to explain processes of change. Meanwhile, pioneer fieldworkers studying whole
regions opened up a truly world archaeology in time and space—in time, back from
the present to the earliest toolmakers, and in space, across all the world’s continents.
More recenTly a diversity of theoretical approaches, often grouped under the

label postprocessual, highlighted the variety of possible interpretations and the
sensitivity of their political implications. Today archaeology plays a significant role
in the establishment of national and ethnic identities.
Precisely hoW archaeologisTs are continuing to push back the frontiers of

knowledge about our planet’s human past forms the subject of the rest of this book.
Further Reading
Good introductions to the history of to the Twenty-First Century. Prentice
archaeology include: Hall: Upper Saddle River, NJ.
Johnson, M. 2010. Archaeological
Bahn, P. G. (ed.). 1999. The Cambridge Theory: An Introduction (2nd ed.).
Illustrated History of Archaeology. Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford.
Cambridge University Press: Lowenthal, D. 1999. The Past is a Foreign
Cambridge & New York. Country. Cambridge University Press:
Bahn, P. G. (ed.). 2014. The History Cambridge & New York.
of Archaeology: An Introduction. Renfrew, C. & Bahn, P. (eds). 2004.
Routledge: London. Key Concepts in Archaeology.
Cohen, G. M. & Joukowsky, M. S. Routledge: London & New York.
(eds). 2007. Pioneering Women Trigger, B. G. 2006. A History of
Archaeologists. Michigan University Archaeological Thought (2nd
Press: Ann Arbor. ed.). Cambridge University Press:
Deetz, J. 1996. In Small Things Cambridge & New York.
Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early Willey, G. R. & Sabloff, J. A. 1993. A
American Life (2nd ed.). Anchor History of American Archaeology
Books: New York. (3rd ed.). Freeman: New York.
Fagan, B. M. 2004. A Brief History
of Archaeology: Classical Times [See p. 345 for a list of useful websites]
Summary and Further Reading 37

2 What Is Left?
The Variety of the Evidence
Basic Categories of
Archaeological Evidence 40
The Importance of Context 42
Formation Processes 43
❑ Experimental Archaeology 45
Cultural Formation
Processes—How People Have
Affected What Survives in the
Archaeological Record 46
Natural Formation
Processes—How Nature
Affects What Survives in the
Archaeological Record 48
Inorganic Materials 48
Organic Materials 49
Preservation of Organic Materials:
Extreme Conditions 51
❑ Dry Preservation: The Tomb of
Tutankhamun 52
❑ Cold Preservation 1: The Iceman 54
❑ Cold Preservation 2: Mountain
“Mummies” 56
❑ Wet Preservation: The Ozette Site 58
Study Questions 60
Summary 61
Further Reading 61
The relics of past human activity are all around us. Some of them were
deliberate constructions, built to last, for example the pyramids of Egypt,
the Great Wall of China, or the temples of Mesoamerica and India. Others,
such as the remains of the Maya irrigation systems of Mexico and Belize,
are the visible relics of activities, the aim of which was not primarily to
impress the observer, but that still command respect today for the scale
of the enterprise they document.
Most of the remains of archaeology are far more modest, however. They
are the discarded garbage from the daily activities of human existence: the
food remains, the bits of broken pottery, the fractured stone tools, the debris
that is formed everywhere as people go about their daily lives.
In this chapter we define the basic archaeological terms, briefly survey the
scope of the surviving evidence, and look at the great variety of ways in which
it has been preserved for us. From the frozen soil of the Russian steppes, for
instance, have come the wonderful finds of Pazyryk, those great chieftains’
burials where wood and textiles and skins are splendidly preserved. From the
dry caves of Peru and other arid environments have come remarkable textiles,
baskets, and other remains that often perish completely. And by contrast, from
wetlands, whether the swamps of Florida or the lake villages of Switzerland,
further organic remains are being recovered, this time preserved not by the
absence of moisture, but by its abundant presence to the exclusion of air.
Extremes of temperature and of humidity have preserved much. So too
have natural disasters. The volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii in Italy
is the most famous of them, but there have been others, such as the eruption
of the Ilopango volcano in El Salvador in the second century ce, which buried
land surfaces and settlement remains in a large part of the southern Maya area.
Unfortunately most archaeological sites are not in areas subjected to
extremes of climate or volcanic activity, and levels of preservation can vary
enormously. Our knowledge of the early human past is dependent in this
way on the human activities and natural processes that have formed the
2 • What Is Left? 39
EUROPEAN REGION NORTHWEST GERMAN REGION
Areas
Areas settled
settled
by first farmers
by first
farmers
Rh
i ne
Ri
v er
1: 40,000,000 1: 4,000,000
archaeological record, and on those further processes that determine, over

long periods of time, what is left and what is gone for ever. Today we can hope
to recover much of what remains, and to learn from it by asking the right
questions in the right way.
Basic Categories of Archaeological Evidence

The evidence studied by archaeologists very often includes artifacts—objects
used, modified, or made by people. But equally important is the study of
organic and environmental remains—known as ecofacts—that, although
not made by humans, can still be very revealing about many aspects of past
human activity. Much archaeological research concentrates on the analysis
of these artifacts and ecofacts that are found together on sites, which in turn
are most productively studied together with their surrounding landscapes
and grouped together into regions. Some of these different scales at which
archaeologists operate, as well as the terminology they use, are illustrated
above and opposite.
Artifacts are humanly made or modified portable objects, such as stone
tools, pottery, and metal weapons. But artifacts provide evidence to help us
answer all the key questions—not just technological ones—addressed in this
book. A single clay vessel or pot can be analyzed in a number of different ways.
The clay may be tested to produce a date for the vessel and thus perhaps a date
for the location where it was found. It could also be tested to find the source
of the clay and thus give evidence for the range and contacts of the group that
made the vessel. Pictorial decoration on the pot’s surface could help to form
or be related to a sequence of design styles (a typology), and it could tell us
something about ancient beliefs, particularly if it shows gods or other figures.
And analysis of the vessel’s shape and any food or other residues found in it
can yield information about the pot’s use, perhaps in cooking, as well as about
ancient diet.
40 2 • What Is Left?
SMALL REGION GROUP OF SITES
r
ve
Areas with
Ri
in association
soils suitable c
h
with river z ba
for first er
farmers M
(loess soils)
Rhine River
Sites
1: 400,000 1: 40,000
INDIVIDUAL SITE
(SMALL VILLAGE)
Early phase house

(structure)
Garbage pit (feature)

containing organic
remains (ecofacts)
Path
(feature)
Silo
(small structure)
Later phase house

(structure)
1: 4000
Different scales and terminology used in archaeology, INDIVIDUAL STRUCTURE (HOUSE)

from the continental region (opposite page, top left) to
the individual structure (this page, bottom right). In this
representation of the pattern of settlement of Europe’s
first farmers (fifth millennium bce), the archaeologist might
study—at the broader scale—the interesting association
between sites and light, easily worked soils near rivers.
At the smaller scale, the association—established
by excavation—of houses with other houses and with Scatter of artifacts Posthole (feature)
such structures as silos for grain storage raises questions,
1: 400 Artifacts and features are found
for example about social organization and permanence in association with the structure
of occupation during this period.
Basic Categories of Archaeological Evidence 41

Some researchers broaden the meaning of the term artifact to include
Key Concepts all humanly modified components of a site or landscape, such as hearths,
Types of Evidence postholes, and storage pits—but these non-portable artifacts are more usefully
described as features. Such simple features as postholes may themselves,
Artifacts: portable objects used, or in combination with remains of hearths, floors, ditches, etc., give evidence
modified, or made by humans for complex features or structures, defined as buildings of all kinds, from
houses and granaries to palaces and temples.
Ecofacts: organic and
Non-artifactual organic and environmental remains, or ecofacts,
environmental remains not made
by humans
include human skeletons, animal bones, and plant remains, but also soils
and sediments—all of which may shed light on past human activities.
Features: non-portable artifacts They are important because they can indicate, for example, what people ate
or the environmental conditions in which they lived.
Sites: places where artifacts,
Archaeological sites may be thought of as the huge variety of places where
ecofacts, and features are found
together
artifacts, features, structures, and organic and environmental remains are
found together. For working purposes we can simplify this still further and
define sites as places where significant traces of human activity are identified.
Thus a village or town is a site, and so too is an isolated monument, such as
Serpent Mound in Ohio. Equally, a surface scatter of stone tools or potsherds
may represent a site occupied for no more than a few hours, whereas a Near
Eastern tell or mound is a site indicating human occupation over perhaps
thousands of years.
The Importance of Context

In order to reconstruct past human activity at a site it is crucially important
to understand the context of a find, whether artifact, ecofact, or feature.
A find’s context consists of its immediate matrix (the material surrounding it,
usually some sort of sediment, such as gravel, sand, or clay), its provenience
(horizontal and vertical position within the matrix), and its association with
other finds (occurrence together with other archaeological remains, usually
Key Concepts
in the same matrix). In the nineteenth century the demonstration that stone
Context
tools were often associated with the bones of extinct animals in a sealed
matrix helped establish the idea of the great antiquity of humankind.
Matrix: the material surrounding a
find (an artifact, ecofact, or feature) Increasingly since then archaeologists have recognized the importance
of identifying and accurately recording associations between remains on sites.
Provenience: the exact position This is why it is such a tragedy when looters dig up a site indiscriminately,
of a find within the matrix looking for rich finds, without recording its matrix, provenience, or
associations. All the contextual information is lost. A looted vase may be
Association: a find’s relationship
with other finds attractive for a collector, but far more could have been learnt about the society
that produced it had archaeologists been able to record where it was found
Without context, an artifact loses (in a tomb, ditch, or house?) and in association with what other artifacts or
much of its archaeological value organic remains (weapons, tools, or animal bones?). Much information about
the Mimbres people of the American Southwest has been lost for ever because
looters bulldozed their sites, hunting for the superbly painted—and highly
sought after—bowls made by the Mimbres 1000 years ago (see box, p. 310).
When modern (or ancient) looters disturb a site, perhaps shifting aside
material they are not interested in, they destroy that material’s primary
context. If archaeologists subsequently excavate that shifted material, they
need to be able to recognize that it is in a secondary context. This may be
straightforward for, say, a Mimbres site, looted quite recently, but it is much
more difficult for a site disturbed in antiquity. Nor is disturbance confined
to human activity: archaeologists dealing with the tens of thousands of years
of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age period know well that the forces of nature—
encroaching seas or ice sheets, wind and water action—invariably destroy
primary context. A great many of the Stone Age tools found in European river
gravels are in a secondary context, transported by water action far from their
original, primary context.
Formation Processes
In recent years archaeologists have become increasingly aware that a
whole series of formation processes may have affected both the way in which
finds came to be buried and what happened to them after they were buried.
The study of these processes is called taphonomy.
A useful distinction has been made between cultural formation processes
and non-cultural or natural formation processes. Cultural formation processes
involve the deliberate or accidental activities of human beings as they make or
use artifacts, build or abandon buildings, plow their fields, and so on. Natural
formation processes are natural events that govern both the burial and the
survival of the archaeological record. The sudden fall of volcanic ash that
covered Pompeii is an exceptional example; a more common one would
be the gradual burial of artifacts or features by wind-borne sand or soil.
Likewise the transporting of stone tools by river action, referred to above,
or the activities of animals—burrowing into a site or chewing bones and
pieces of wood—are also examples of natural formation processes.
At first sight these distinctions may seem of little interest to the
archaeologist. In fact they are vital to the accurate reconstruction of past
human activities. It can be important to know whether certain archaeological
evidence is the product of human or non-human (cultural or natural) activity.
If, for example, you are trying to reconstruct human woodworking activities
by studying cutmarks on timber, then you should learn to recognize certain
kinds of marks made by beavers using their teeth and to distinguish these
from cutmarks made by humans using stone or metal tools.
Let us take an even more significant example. For the earliest phases of
human existence in Africa, at the beginning of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age
period, theories about our primitive hunting ability have been based on the
Early humans as mere scavengers (above)
or mighty hunters (right)? Our understanding
of formation processes governs the way in
which we interpret associations of human
tools with animal bones from the fossil
record in Africa.
association between stone tools and animal bones found at archaeological

sites. The bones were assumed to be those of animals hunted and slaughtered
by the early humans who made the tools. But studies of animal behavior and
cutmarks on animal bones suggest that in many cases the excavated bones
are the remains of animals hunted and largely eaten by other predatory
animals. The humans with their stone tools would have come upon the
Experimental
Archaeology
1960
1962
1976
One effective way to study formation
processes is through long-term
experimental archaeology. An excellent
example is the experimental earthwork
constructed on Overton Down,
southern England, in 1960.
The earthwork consists of a
substantial chalk and turf bank, 21 m
(69 ft.) long, 7 m (25 ft.) wide, and 2 m
(6 ft. 7 in.) high, with a ditch cut parallel
to it. The aim of the experiment has
been to assess not only how the bank
and ditch alter through time, but also
what happens to buried materials, such since the mid-1970s, the structure has The bank and ditch as cut in 1960, together
as pottery, leather, and textiles. Sections stabilized. As for the buried materials, with the changes revealed by sections cut across
the earthwork in 1962 and 1976.
(trenches) have been—or will be—cut tests after four years showed that
across the bank and ditch at intervals pottery was unchanged and leather
of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, and 128 years little affected, but textiles were already was considerable reworking
(in real time, 1962, 1964, 1968, 1976, becoming weakened and discolored. and transporting of fine sediment
1992, 2024, and 2088): a considerable The excavations in 1992 revealed by earthworms.
commitment for all concerned. that preservation was better in the The experiment has already shown
The project is nearing the halfway chalk bank, which is less biologically that many of the changes that interest
point, and preliminary results have active, than in the turf core, where archaeologists occur within decades
been interesting. In the 1960s the bank textiles and some wood had completely of burial, and that the extent of these
dropped some 25 cm (10 in.) in height disappeared. The structure itself had changes can be far greater than had
and the ditch silted up quite rapidly; changed little since 1976, though there hitherto been suspected.
scene as mere scavengers, at the end of a pecking order of different animal

species. By no means everyone agrees with this scavenging hypothesis. The
point to emphasize here is that the issue can best be resolved by improving
our techniques for distinguishing between cultural and natural formation
processes—between human and non-human activity. Many studies are now
focusing on the need to clarify how to differentiate cutmarks on bones made
by stone tools from those made by the teeth of animal predators. Modern
experiments using replica stone tools to cut meat off bones are one helpful
approach. Other kinds of experimental archaeology can be most instructive
about some of the formation processes that affect the physical preservation
of archaeological material (see box above).
The remainder of this chapter is devoted to a more detailed discussion
of the different cultural and natural formation processes.
Cultural Formation Processes—How People Have
Affected What Survives in the Archaeological Record
We may separate these processes rather crudely into two kinds: those that
reflect the original human behavior and activity before a find or site became
buried; and those (such as plowing or looting) that came after burial. Now of
course most major archaeological sites are formed as the result of a complex
sequence of use, burial, and reuse repeated many times over, so that a simple
two-fold division of cultural formation processes may not be so simple to
apply in practice. Nevertheless, since one of our main aims is to reconstruct
original human behavior and activity, we must make the attempt.
Original human behavior is often reflected archaeologically in at least four
major activities: in the case of a tool (see diagram below) there may be:
1 acquisition of the raw material;

2 manufacture;
3 use (and distribution); and finally
4 disposal or discard when the tool is worn out or broken.
An artifact, a stone tool in this case,
may have entered the archaeological
record at any one of these four stages (The tool may of course be reworked and recycled, i.e. repeating stages 2
in its life cycle. The archaeologist’s task
is to determine which stage is represented
and 3.) Similarly, a food crop, such as wheat, will be acquired (harvested),
by the find in question. manufactured (processed), used (eaten), and discarded (digested and the
1 2
Bifacial point
in haft
Hammerstone
Waste
ACQUISITION USE
4
3
Finished bifacial Waste

point
Broken bifacial point
MANUFACTURE
DISCARD
waste products excreted)—here we might add a common intermediate stage
of storage before use. From the archaeologist’s point of view the critical
factor is that remains can enter the archaeological record at any one of
these stages—a tool may be lost or thrown out as inferior quality during
manufacture, or a crop may be accidentally burnt and thus preserved during
processing. In order to reconstruct accurately the original activity it is therefore
crucial to try to understand which one of the stages we are examining. It may
be quite easy to identify, say, the first stage for stone tools, because stone
quarries can often be recognized by deep holes in the ground, with piles of
associated waste flakes and blanks, which survive well. But it is much more
difficult to know beyond reasonable doubt whether a sample of charred plant
remains comes from, say, a threshing area or an occupation area—and this may
also make it difficult to reconstruct the true plant diet, since certain activities
may favor the preservation of certain species of plant.
Deliberate burial of valuables is another major aspect of original human
behavior that has left its mark on the archaeological record. In times of
conflict or war people often deposit prized possessions in the ground,
intending to reclaim them at a later date but sometimes for one reason
or another failing to do so. These hoards are a prime source of evidence
for certain periods, such as the European Bronze Age, for which hoards of
metal goods are common, or later Roman Britain, which has yielded buried
treasures of silver and other precious metals. The archaeologist, however,
may not find it easy to distinguish between hoards originally intended to
be recovered and valuables buried with no reclamation intended, perhaps
to placate supernatural powers (placed for example at a particularly
dangerous part of a crossing over a bog).
How archaeologists set about trying to demonstrate belief in supernatural
powers and an afterlife will be seen in Chapter 9. Here we may note that, in
addition to hoards, the major source of evidence comes from burial of the
dead, whether in simple graves, elaborate burial mounds, or giant pyramids,
usually with such grave-goods as ceramic vessels or weapons, and sometimes
with painted tomb-chamber walls, as in ancient Mexico or Egypt. The
Egyptians indeed went so far as to mummify their dead—to preserve them,
they hoped, for eternity—as did the Incas of Peru, whose kings were kept in
the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco and brought outside for special ceremonies.
Human destruction of the archaeological record might be caused by
burials of the kind just described being dug into earlier deposits. But people
in the past deliberately or accidentally obliterated traces of their predecessors
in innumerable other ways. Rulers, for instance, often destroyed monuments
or erased inscriptions belonging to previous chiefs or monarchs. Some
human destruction meant to obliterate has inadvertently preserved material
for the archaeologist to find. Burning, for example, may not always destroy.
Cultural Formation Processes 47

It can often improve the chances of survival of a variety of remains, such
as of plants: the conversion into carbon greatly increases the powers of
resistance to the ravages of time. Clay daubing and adobe usually decay,
but if a structure has been fired, the mud is baked to the consistency of a
brick. In the same way thousands of clay writing tablets from the Near East
have been baked accidentally or deliberately in fires and thus preserved.
Timbers too may char and survive in structures, or at least leave a clear
impression in the hardened mud.
Today human destruction of the archaeological record continues at a
frightening pace, through land drainage, plowing, building work, looting,
etc. In Chapter 12 we discuss how this affects archaeology generally and
what the potential implications are for the future.
Natural Formation Processes—How Nature Affects

What Survives in the Archaeological Record
We saw above how natural formation processes, such as river action, can
disturb or destroy the primary context of archaeological material. Here we
will focus on that material itself, and the natural processes that cause decay
or lead to preservation.
Practically any archaeological material can survive in exceptional
circumstances. Usually, however, inorganic materials survive far better than
Key Concepts organic ones.
Survival of Inorganic
Materials Inorganic Materials
The most common inorganic materials to survive archaeologically are stone,
Stone tools, fired clay, and some clay, and metals.
metals, such as gold, silver, and
Stone tools survive extraordinarily well—some are more than 2 million
lead, survive very well in nearly
all environments years old. Not surprisingly they have always been our main source of evidence
for human activities during the Paleolithic period, even though wooden and
Some metals, such as copper, bone tools (which are less likely to be preserved) may originally have equaled
can corrode depending on the soil stone ones in importance. Stone tools sometimes come down to us so little
conditions, and iron rarely survives
damaged or altered from their primary state that archaeologists can examine
in an uncorroded state
microscopic patterns of wear on their cutting edges and learn, for example,
Although inorganic materials, whether the tools were used to cut wood or animal hides. This is now a major
particularly stone tools and branch of archaeological inquiry.
pottery, are very often found at Fired clay, such as pottery and baked mud brick or adobe, is virtually
archaeological sites, these objects
indestructible if well fired. It is therefore again not surprising that for the
may well have been equaled or
superseded in abundance and
periods after the introduction of pottery-making (some 16,000 years ago
importance by objects that usually in Japan, and 9000 years ago in the Near East and parts of South America)
do not survive, such as wooden ceramics have traditionally been the archaeologist’s main source of evidence.
tools or baskets As we saw earlier in this chapter, pots can be studied for their shape, surface
decoration, mineral content, and even the food or other residues left inside
This bronze head from a statue of a them. Acid soils can damage the surface of fired clay, and porous or badly
Greek male athlete was found off the
coast of Croatia in 2001. Bronze survives fired clay vessels or mud brick can become fragile in humid conditions.
well in seawater, but some 2000 years Even disintegrated mud brick, however, can help to assess rebuilding phases
of encrustation had to be painstakingly
removed by restorers. in, for instance, Peruvian villages or Near Eastern tells.
Such metals as gold, silver, and lead survive well. Copper, and bronze with
a low-quality alloy, are attacked by acid soils, and can become so oxidized that
only a green deposit or stain is left. Oxidation is also a rapid and powerful
agent of the destruction of iron, which rusts and may similarly leave only
a discoloration in the soil.
The sea is potentially very destructive. Underwater remains can be broken
and scattered by currents, waves, or tidal action. On the other hand, the sea
can cause metals to be coated with a thick, hard casing of metallic salts from
the objects themselves; this helps to preserve the artifacts. If the remains are
simply taken out of the water and not treated, the salts react with air, and
give off acid that destroys the remaining metal. But the use of electrolysis—
placing the object in a chemical solution and passing a weak current through
it—leaves the metal artifact clean and safe. This is a standard procedure in
underwater archaeology and is used on all types of objects from cannons
to the finds recovered from the Titanic.
Organic Materials
Survival of organic materials is determined largely by the matrix (the
surrounding material) and by climate (local and regional)—with the
occasional influence of such natural disasters as volcanic eruptions,
which are often far from disastrous for archaeologists.
The matrix, as we saw earlier, is usually some kind of sediment or
soil. These vary in their effects on organic material; chalk, for example,
preserves human and animal bone well (in addition to inorganic metals).
Acid soils destroy bones and wood within a few years, but will leave telltale
discolorations where postholes or hut foundations once stood. Similar
brown or black marks survive in sandy soils, as do dark silhouettes that
used to be skeletons.
But the immediate matrix may in exceptional circumstances have an
additional component, such as metal ore, salt, or oil. Copper can favor
the preservation of organic remains, perhaps by preventing the activity of
destructive micro-organisms. The prehistoric copper (and salt) mines of central
and southeastern Europe, for example, contain many remains of wood, leather,
and textiles.
A combination of salt and oil ensured the preservation of a woolly
rhinoceros at Starunia, Ukraine, with skin intact, and the leaves and fruits
of tundra vegetation around it. The animal had been carried by a strong
current into a pool saturated with crude oil and salt from a natural oil
Natural Formation Processes 49

seep, which prevented decomposition: bacteria could not operate in these
Key Concepts conditions, while salt had permeated the skin and preserved it. Similarly, the
Survival of Organic asphalt pits of La Brea, Los Angeles, are world famous for the large quantities
Materials and fine condition of the skeletons of a wide range of prehistoric animals
and birds recovered from them.
Matrix: the conditions and makeup
Climate plays an important role too in the preservation of organic remains.
of the soil or sediment surrounding
organic material dictate whether the
Occasionally the “local climate” of an environment, such as a cave, preserves
latter survives finds. Caves are natural “conservatories” because their interiors are protected
from outside climatic effects, and (in the case of limestone caves) their alkaline
Climate: the local and regional conditions permit excellent preservation. If undisturbed by floods or the
weather conditions in turn affect
trampling feet of animals and people, they can preserve bones and even such
soils, erosion, flora, and fauna
fragile remains as footprints.
Natural disasters, such as volcanic More usually, however, it is the regional climate that is important. Tropical
eruptions, and extremes of dry, climates are the most destructive, with their combination of heavy rains, acid
cold, and wet conditions, can soils, warm temperatures, high humidity, erosion, and wealth of vegetation
lead to exceptional preservation
and insect life. Tropical rainforests can overwhelm a site remarkably quickly,
of organic materials
with roots that dislodge masonry and tear buildings apart, while torrential
downpours gradually destroy paint and plasterwork, and woodwork rots away
completely. Archaeologists in southern Mexico, for example, constantly have
to battle to keep back the jungle. On the other hand, jungle conditions can be
positive, in that they hinder looters from easily reaching even more sites than
they do already.
Temperate climates, as in much of Europe and North America, are not
good, as a rule, for the preservation of organic materials; their relatively
warm but variable temperatures and fluctuating rainfall usually combine
to accelerate the processes of decay. In some circumstances, however, local
conditions can counteract these processes. At the Roman fort of Vindolanda,
near Hadrian’s Wall in northern England, more than 1300 letters and
documents, written in ink on wafer-thin sheets of birch and alderwood, have
been found. Offering a remarkable insight into both military and personal
matters on the frontier, the fragments, dating to about 100 ce, have survived
because of the soil’s unusual chemical condition: clay compacted between
layers in the site created oxygen-free pockets (the exclusion of oxygen is
vital to the preservation of organic materials), while chemicals produced by
bracken, bone, and other remains effectively made the land sterile in that
locality, thus preventing disturbance by vegetation and other forms of life.
Natural disasters sometimes preserve sites, including organic remains,
for the archaeologist. The most common are violent storms, such as the one
that covered the coastal Neolithic village of Skara Brae, in the Orkney Islands,
off the north coast of Scotland, with sand; the mudslide that engulfed the
prehistoric village of Ozette on America’s Northwest Coast (see box, p. 58);
or volcanic eruptions, such as that of Vesuvius, which buried and preserved
Roman Pompeii under a blanket of ash. Another volcanic eruption, this time
in El Salvador in about 595 ce, deposited a thick and widespread layer of ash
over a densely populated area of Maya settlement. Work here has uncovered
a variety of organic remains at the site of Cerén, including palm and grass
roofing, mats, baskets, stored grain, and even preserved agricultural furrows.
Apart from these special circumstances, the survival of organic materials

is limited to cases involving extremes of moisture: that is, very dry, frozen,
or waterlogged conditions.
Preservation of Organic Materials: Extreme Conditions

Dry EnvironmEnts. Great aridity or dryness prevents decay through
the shortage of water, which ensures that many destructive micro-organisms
are unable to flourish. Archaeologists first became aware of the phenomenon
in Egypt (see Tutankhamun box overleaf), where much of the Nile Valley
has such a dry atmosphere that bodies of the Predynastic period (before
3000 bce) have survived intact, with skin, hair, and nails, without any
artificial mummification or coffins—the corpses were simply placed in
shallow graves in the sand. Rapid drying out, plus the draining qualities of
the sand, produced such spectacular preservative effects that they probably
suggested the practice of mummification to the later Egyptians of the
Dynastic period.
The pueblo dwellers of the American Southwest (c. 700–1400 ce) buried
their dead in dry caves and rockshelters where, as in Egypt, natural desiccation
took place: these are not therefore true, humanly created mummies, although
they are often referred to as such. The bodies survive, sometimes wrapped
in fur blankets or tanned skins, and in such good condition that it has been
possible to study hair styles. Clothing (from fiber sandals to string aprons)
also remains, together with a wide range of goods, such as basketry, feathered
ornaments, and leather. Some far earlier sites in the same region also contain
organic remains: Danger Cave, Utah (occupied from 9000 bce onward), yielded
wooden arrows, trap springs, knife handles, and other wooden tools, while
caves near Durango, Colorado, had preserved maize cobs, squashes, and
sunflower and mustard seeds. Plant finds of this type have been crucial
in helping to reconstruct ancient diet.
The coastal dwellers of central and southern Peru lived—and died—in a
similarly dry environment, so that it is possible today to see the tattoos on
their desiccated bodies, and admire the huge and dazzlingly colorful textiles
from cemeteries at Ica and Nazca, as well as basketry and featherwork, and
also maize cobs and other items of food. In Chile, the oldest deliberately made
mummies have been found at Chinchorro, preserved again by the aridity of
the desert environment.

Dry Preservation:
The Tomb of Tutankhamun EGYPT
Thebes l
The arid conditions that prevail in history, a fact reflected in his burial,
Egypt have helped preserve a wide a poor one by pharaonic standards.
range of ancient materials, ranging But within the small tomb, originally
from numerous written documents built for someone else, was a wealth
on papyrus (made of the pith of a Nile of treasure. For Tutankhamun was
water plant) to two full-size wooden buried with everything he might need
boats buried beside the Great Pyramid in the next life. The entrance corridor
at Giza. But the best-known and most and the four chambers were crammed
spectacular array of objects was that with thousands of individual grave-
discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter goods. They included objects of
and Lord Carnarvon in the tomb at precious metal, such as jewelry and
Thebes of the pharaoh Tutankhamun, the famous gold mask, and food and
dating to the fourteenth century bce. clothing. But wooden objects, such
Tutankhamun had a short reign and as statues, chests, shrines, and two
was relatively insignificant in Egyptian of the three coffins, made up a large
part of the tomb’s contents.
The grave furniture was not all (Above) The outermost of Tutankhamun’s
originally intended for Tutankhamun. three coffins was made of cypress wood,
overlaid with gold foil.
Some of it had been made for other
members of his family, and then hastily
adopted when the young king died
unexpectedly. There were also touching
(Left) A gilded ritual couch found remarkably
well preserved among the contents of the
items, such as a chair the king had
tomb of Tutankhamun. used as a child, and a simple reed stick
mounted in gold labeled as “A reed
which His Majesty cut with his own
hand.” Even wreaths and funerary
bouquets had survived in the
dry conditions, left on the
(Below) A cutaway second and third coffins
view of the tomb and
by mourners.
its treasures, as found
in 1922.
52
A slightly different phenomenon occurred in the Aleutian Islands, off the
west coast of Alaska, where the dead were kept and naturally preserved in
volcanically warmed caves that were extremely dry. Here the islanders seem
to have enhanced the natural desiccation by periodically drying the bodies
by wiping or suspension over a fire; in some cases they removed the internal
organs and placed dry grass in the cavity.
ColD EnvironmEnts. Natural refrigeration can hold the processes of decay

in check for thousands of years. Perhaps the first frozen finds to be discovered
were the numerous remains of mammoths encountered in the permafrost
(permanently frozen soil) of Siberia, a few with their flesh, hair, and stomach
contents intact. The unlucky creatures probably fell into crevices in snow, and
were buried by silt in what became a giant deep-freeze. The best-known are
Beresovka, recovered in 1901, and baby Dima, found in 1977. Preservation can
be still so good that dogs will eat the meat and they have to be kept well away
from the carcasses.
The most famous frozen archaeological remains are those from the burial
mounds of steppe nomads at Pazyryk in the Altai Mountains, southern
Siberia, dating to the Iron Age, about 400 bce. They comprise pits dug deep
into the ground, lined with logs, and covered with a low cairn of stones. They
could only have been dug in the warm season, before the ground froze solid.
Any warm air in the graves rose and deposited its moisture on the stones of
the cairn; moisture also gradually infiltrated down into the burial chambers,
and froze so hard there during the harsh winter that it never thawed during
subsequent summers, since the cairns were poor conductors of heat and
shielded the pits from the warming and drying effects of wind and sun.
Consequently, even the most fragile materials have survived intact—despite
the boiling water that had to be used by excavators to recover them.
The Pazyryk bodies had been placed inside log coffins, with wooden
pillows, and survived so well that their spectacular tattoos can still be seen.
Clothing included linen shirts, decorated caftans, aprons, stockings, and
headdresses of felt and leather. There were also rugs, wall-coverings, tables
laden with food, and horse carcasses complete with elaborate bridles, saddles,
and other trappings. A further well-preserved burial has been found in the
region, containing a female accompanied by six horses, and grave-goods
including a silver mirror and various wooden objects.
Similar standards of preservation have also been encountered in other
regions, such as Greenland and Alaska. More southerly regions can produce
Frozen conditions in southern Siberia
helped to preserve many remarkable finds
the same effect at high altitude, for instance the Inca-period “mummies”
from the burial mounds of steppe nomads found at a number of high-altitude sites in the Andes; or the 5300-year-old
at Pazyryk, dating from about 400 bce,
including this tattoo pattern on the torso
Iceman found preserved in the ice in the Alps near the border between Italy
and arms of a chieftain. and Austria (see boxes, overleaf and p. 56).

Cold Preservation 1:
The Iceman
The world’s oldest fully preserved Ötztal

l
human body was found in September Alps

IT
1991 by German hikers near the AL
Y
Similaun glacier, in the Ötztal Alps of
South Tyrol. They spotted a human
body, its skin yellowish-brown and
desiccated, at an altitude of 3200 m
(10,500 ft.). The Iceman is the first
prehistoric human ever found with
his everyday clothing and equipment;
other similarly intact bodies from
prehistory have been either carefully
buried or sacrificed.
The body was placed in a freezer in
Austria, but subsequent investigation
determined that the corpse—called
Similaun Man, Ötzi, or simply the
Iceman—had lain c. 90 m (300 ft.) inside
Italy, and he has been housed there, in a (Above right) The
museum in Bolzano, since 1998. Fifteen body of the Iceman
radiocarbon dates have been obtained after preservation.
from the body, the artifacts, and the
grass in the boots: they are all in rough
agreement, averaging at 3300 bce.
It was initially thought the Iceman
was overcome by exhaustion—perhaps
caught in a fog or a blizzard. After death,
he was dried out by a warm autumn
wind, before becoming encased in ice.
Since the body lay in a depression, it
was protected from the movement of
the glacier above it for 5300 years, until
a storm from the Sahara laid a layer of
dust on the ice that absorbed sunlight
and finally thawed it out.
(Right) The Iceman, the oldest fully preserved

human, as found in 1991, emerging from the
melting ice that had preserved him for more
than 5000 years.
Bearskin cap
Coat of tanned Yew longbow Deerskin quiver

domestic goat hide (unfinished) with fourteen arrows
(only two finished) of
viburnum and dogwood,
an antler point and two
fragments, coiled string,
Calf leather belt and
and two bundles of
pouch, with three
animal sinews
flint tools, a bone
awl, and organic Copper axe
material (for tinder) with yew haft
and leather
binding Hazel and Cape of woven
Dagger: flint blade larchwood grass or reeds
with ashwood haft in frame
woven grass sheath for a fur
backpack
Leather loincloth
Sewn birch-bark
containers (one with
Shoes: evidence of fire)
bearskin soles with
deerskin uppers;
Leather leggings filled with grass
He was a dark-skinned male, aged of meat have been found in his colon The equipment and clothing of the Iceman are a
in his mid- to late forties. Only about (probably ibex and venison), along with virtual time-capsule of everyday life—more than
seventy objects were found associated with him.
1.56–1.6 m (5 ft. 2 in.) tall, his size and wheat, plants, and plums.
stature fit well within the measurement Traces of chronic frostbite were
ranges of late Neolithic populations noted in one little toe, and eight of his
in Italy and Switzerland. Preliminary ribs were fractured, though these had
analysis of his DNA confirms his links healed or were healing when he died.
to northern Europe. Groups of tattoos, mostly short
The corpse currently weighs only parallel vertical blue lines, were
about 54 kg (120 lb). His teeth are very discovered on both sides of his lower supported the view that he fell prey
worn, especially the front incisors, spine, on his left calf and right ankle, to adverse weather and froze to death.
suggesting that he ate coarse ground his wrists, and he had a blue cross Recent work, however, has revealed
grain, or that he regularly used them on his inner right knee. These marks, what appears to be an arrowhead
as a tool. When found he was bald, probably made with soot, may be lodged in the Iceman’s left shoulder,
but hundreds of curly brownish-black therapeutic, aimed at relieving the cuts on his hands, wrists, and ribcage,
human hairs, about 9 cm (3.5 in.) long, arthritis that he had in his neck, and a blow to the head—either from
were recovered from the vicinity of the lower back, and right hip. being struck or from falling—which
body. These had fallen out after death, His nails had dropped off, but one is probably what killed him.
and it is possible he had a beard. fingernail was recovered. Its analysis The items found with him constitute
A body scan has shown that the revealed not only that he undertook a unique time-capsule of everyday life.
brain, muscle tissues, lungs, heart, manual labor, but also that he A great variety of woods and a range
liver, and digestive organs are in experienced periods of reduced nail of sophisticated techniques of working
excellent condition, though the lungs growth corresponding to episodes of with leather and grasses were used to
are blackened by smoke, probably from serious illness—four, three, and two create the collection of seventy objects,
open fires, and he has hardening of months before he died. The fact that he which add a new dimension to our
the arteries and blood vessels. Traces was prone to periodic crippling disease knowledge of the period.
Cold Preservation 1: The Iceman 55

Cold Preservation 2: PERU
out a series of expeditions to high
BOL
Ampato
Mountain “Mummies” peaks in the Andes, and discovered
IVIA
CH IL E
some of the best-preserved ancient
Llullaillaco bodies ever found, thanks to this
“extreme archaeology.”
On the Ampato volcano, at 6312 m
Since the 1950s, sporadic discoveries known as mummies, even though they (20,708 ft.), he found a bundle lying
have been made of frozen bodies were preserved only by the cold, not by on the ice that contained an Inca
high in the Andes mountains of South any process of artificial mummification. girl—dubbed the “Ice Maiden” or
America—these finds have become The Incas of the fifteenth to sixteenth “Juanita”—who had been ritually
centuries ce built more than 100 sacrificed (by a blow to the head) at the
ceremonial centers on many of the age of about fourteen, and buried with
highest peaks in their empire, since they figurines, food, textiles, and pottery.
worshiped the snowcapped mountains, The buried bodies of a boy and girl were
believing that they provided the water later excavated at 5850 m (19,193 ft.).
for irrigating fields, and hence controlled In 1999, on the peak of Llullaillaco—
the fertility of crops and animals. at 6739 m (22,109 ft.)—he encountered
Among the offerings left for the a seven-year-old boy, and two girls
mountain gods were food, alcoholic of fifteen and six, all with figurines and
drinks, textiles, pottery, and figurines— textiles. So perfect is the preservation
but also human sacrifices, often young of all these bodies that detailed
children. In the 1990s, American analyses can be carried out on their
archaeologist Johan Reinhard carried internal organs, their DNA, and their
hair. For example, isotopes in the hair
suggest that they chewed coca leaves,
The older, better-preserved Llullaillaco girl had
neatly braided hair and wore a selection a common practice in the region
of ornaments. even today.
WatErloggED EnvironmEnts. A useful distinction in land archaeology

(as opposed to archaeology beneath the sea) can be drawn between dryland
and wetland sites. The great majority of sites are “dry” in the sense that
moisture content is low and preservation of organic remains is poor. Wetland
sites include all those found in lakes, swamps, marshes, fens, and peat bogs.
In these situations organic materials are effectively sealed in a wet and airless
environment that favors their preservation, as long as the waterlogging is
more or less permanent up to the time of excavation. (If a wet site dries out,
even only seasonally, decomposition of the organic materials can occur.)
It has been estimated that on a wet site often 75–90 percent, sometimes
100 percent, of the finds are organic. Little or none of this material, such as
wood, leather, textiles, basketry, and plant remains of all kinds, would survive
on most dryland sites. It is for this reason that archaeologists are turning
their attention more and more to the rich sources of evidence about past
human activities to be found on wet sites. Growing threats from drainage
and peatcutting in the wetlands, which form only about 6 percent of the
world’s total land area, give this work an added urgency.
Wetlands vary a great deal in their preservative qualities. Acidic peat bogs
preserve wood and plant remains, but may destroy bone, iron, and even
pottery. The lake sites of the Alpine regions of Switzerland, Italy, France,
and southern Germany, on the other hand, preserve most materials well.
Sometimes other forces can help to preserve waterlogged remains, such as the
mudslide that buried the Ozette site in Washington State (see box overleaf).
Excavations at Must Farm in
An important recent example of wet preservation is the Must Farm
Cambridgeshire, in the east of England, settlement in Cambridgeshire, in the east of England, where some of the best-
uncovered extensive Bronze Age remains
including structures and many objects,
preserved Bronze Age dwellings in the world have been excavated. The remains
among them a well-preserved wheel. include two circular wooden houses dating from 1000–800 bce, which appear to
have been damaged by fire before then sliding into the river, where the fire was
extinguished. The buildings and objects within them were then buried and
preserved in silt. Many remarkable objects have now been recovered from the
site, including pots still containing food, textiles woven from lime tree bark
and other plant fibers, and sections of wattle walls. In 2016, a large wooden
wheel about 1 m (3 ft.) in diameter was found, the most complete and earliest
of its type in Britain. Through its waterlogged preservation, Must Farm offers
a rare insight into the everyday life of a Bronze Age village.
Peat bogs, nearly all of which occur in northern latitudes, are some of the
most important environments for wetland archaeology. The Somerset Levels
in southern England, for example, have been the scene not only of excavations
in the early twentieth century to recover the well-preserved Iron Age lake
villages of Glastonbury and Meare, but also of a much wider campaign in the
last few decades that has unearthed numerous wooden trackways (including

Wet Preservation:
The Ozette Site
A special kind of waterlogging occurred

at the Ozette site, Washington, on the
US Northwest Coast. In about 1700 ce,
a huge mudslide buried part of a Makah
Indian whale-hunting village. Ruins of
huge cedar-plank houses lay protected
by the mud for three centuries—but
not forgotten, for the descendants kept carved panels (with designs including Cleaning a basket holding a comb and
the memory of their ancestors’ home wolves and thunderbirds), roof-support a spindle whorl.
alive. Then the sea began to strip away posts, and low partition walls. There
the mud, and it seemed that the site were also hearths, sleeping platforms, of cooperation between archaeologists
might fall prey to looters. The Makah storage boxes, mats, and baskets. and indigenous people. Makah elders
tribal chairman asked Washington More than 55,000 artifacts—mostly helped to identify artifacts; young
State University archaeologist Richard wooden—were recovered. They had Makah helped to excavate; and a
Daugherty to excavate the site and been preserved by the wet mud, which museum now displays the results.
salvage its remains. Clearing the mud excluded oxygen. The most spectacular
with water pumped from the ocean was a block of red cedar, a meter high,
(Below left) A Makah Indian crew member
and sprayed through hoses revealed carved in the form of a whale’s dorsal measures a find in one of the Ozette houses.
a wealth of wood and fiber objects. fin. Even leaves—still green—survived,
The houses, where several related together with many whale bones. (Below right) A red cedar carving in the shape of
a whale’s dorsal fin, inlaid with 700 sea-otter teeth
families would have lived, were up to Field excavation and laboratory
(some forming the shape of a thunderbird holding
21 m (68 ft. 3 in.) in length and 14 m preservation continued non-stop for a serpent, which would stun the whale so that the
(45 ft. 6 in.) wide. They had adzed and eleven years, an outstanding example thunderbird could pick it up in its claws).
l
Ozette
UNITED STATES
the world’s “oldest road,” a 6000-year-old 1.6-km (1-mile) stretch of track),
and many details about early woodworking skills, and the ancient
environment. On the continent of Europe, and in Ireland, peat bogs have
likewise preserved many trackways—sometimes with evidence for the wooden
carts that ran along them—and other fragile remains. Other types of European
wetlands, such as coastal marshes, have yielded dugout logboats, paddles,
even fish-nets and fish-weirs.
Bog bodies, however, are undoubtedly the best-known finds from the
peat bogs of northwestern Europe. Most of them date from the Iron Age. The
degree of preservation varies widely, and depends on the particular conditions
in which the corpses were deposited. Most individuals met a violent death
The surviving parts of Oldcroghan Man’s and were probably either executed as criminals or killed as a sacrifice before
body are superbly preserved, particularly his
hands: the well-kept fingernails and absence
being thrown into the bog. For example, in 2003 the huge (1.91 m (6 ft. 3½ in.)
of calluses suggest that he may have tall) Oldcroghan Man was recovered from a peat bog in Ireland: he had been
been an individual of relatively high status.
Analysis of his stomach contents revealed
stabbed, decapitated, and tied down to the bottom of a bog pool.
a final meal of cereals and buttermilk. The best-preserved specimens, such as Denmark’s Tollund Man, were in a
truly remarkable state, with only the staining caused by bog water and tannic
acid as an indication that they were ancient rather than modern. Within the
skin, the bones have often disappeared, as have most of the internal organs,
although the stomach and its contents may survive. In Florida, prehistoric
human brains have even been recovered.
Occasionally, waterlogged conditions can occur inside burial mounds.
The oak-coffin burials of Bronze Age northern Europe, and most notably those
of Denmark dating to about 1000 bce, had an inner core of stones packed round
the tree-trunk coffin, with a round barrow built above. Water infiltrated the
inside of the mound, and, by combining with tannin from the tree trunks,
created acidic conditions that destroyed the skeleton but preserved the skin
(discolored like the bog bodies), hair, and ligaments of the bodies inside the
coffins, as well as their clothing and such objects as birch-bark pails.
A somewhat similar phenomenon occurred with the ships that the Vikings
used as coffins. The Oseberg ship in Norway, for example, held the body of
a Viking queen of about 800 ce, and was buried in clay, covered by a packing
of stones and a layer of peat that sealed it in and ensured its preservation.
Lake-dwellings have rivaled bog bodies in popular interest ever since
the discovery of wooden piles or house supports in Swiss lakes more than
a century ago. The range of preserved material is astonishing, not simply
wooden structures, artifacts, and textiles but, at Neolithic Charavines in France
for example, even nuts, berries, and other fruits.
Perhaps the greatest contribution to archaeology that lake-dwellings and
other European wetland sites have made in recent years, however, is to provide
abundant well-preserved timber for the study of tree-rings, the annual growth
rings in trees, for dating purposes. In Chapter 4 we explore the breakthrough

this has brought about in the establishment of an accurate tree-ring
chronology for parts of northern Europe stretching back thousands of years.
Another rich source of waterlogged and preserved timbers can be found
in the old waterfronts of towns and cities. Archaeologists have been
particularly successful in uncovering parts of London’s Roman and medieval
waterfront, but such discoveries are not restricted to Europe. In the early
1980s archaeologists in New York excavated a well-preserved eighteenth-
century ship that had been sunk to support the East River waterfront.
Underwater archaeology itself is, not surprisingly, the richest source
of all for waterlogged finds (see pp. 100–102).
The major problem with waterlogged finds, and particularly wood, is that
they deteriorate rapidly when they are uncovered, beginning to dry and crack
almost at once. They therefore need to be kept wet until they can be treated
or freeze-dried at a laboratory. Conservation measures of this kind help to
explain the enormous cost of both wetland and underwater archaeology.
It has been estimated that “wet archaeology” costs four times as much as
“dry archaeology.” But the rewards, as we have seen above, are enormous.
The rewards in the future, too, will be very great. Florida, for example, has
about 1.2 million ha (3 million acres) of peat deposits, and on present evidence
these probably contain more organic artifacts than anywhere else in the
world. So far the wetlands here have yielded the largest number of prehistoric
watercraft from any one region, together with totems, masks, and figurines
dating as far back as 5000 bce. In the Okeechobee Basin, for instance, a first-
millennium bce burial platform has been found, decorated with a series of
large carved wooden totem posts, representing an array of animals and birds.
After a fire, the platform had collapsed into its pond. Yet it is only recently
that wet finds in Florida have come to us from careful excavation rather than
through the drainage that is destroying large areas of peat deposits and,
with them, untold quantities of the richest kinds of archaeological evidence.
Study Questions
1 What is the difference between an artifact and an ecofact?

2 Why is it important for archaeologists to distinguish between cultural
and natural formation processes?
3 Why is the context of an artifact so very important to archaeologists?
4 Why do inorganic materials survive better than organic materials?
5 Why are archaeologists particularly interested in wet or waterlogged sites?
6 What is experimental archaeology?
Summary
thE arChaEologiCal EviDEnCE available to us depends on a number of
important factors:
What pEoplE, past anD prEsEnt, have done to it (cultural formation processes).
What natural ConDitions, such as soil and climate, have preserved or destroyed
(natural formation processes). Inorganic materials usually survive far better than
organics, but the latter can be well preserved in a range of special environments—
the dry, the cold, and the waterlogged.
our ability to find, recognize, recover, and conserve it.
WE Can Do nothing about the first two factors, being at the mercy of the elements
and previous human behavior. But the third factor, which is the subject of this book,
is constantly improving, as we understand better the processes of decay and
destruction, and design research strategies and technical aids to make the most
of what archaeological evidence actually survives.
Further Reading
Good introductions to the problems Regional Issues, Global Perspectives.
of differential preservation of Oxbow Books: Oxford.
archaeological materials can be Menotti, F. & O’Sullivan, M. 2012. Oxford
found in: Handbook of Wetland Archaeology.
Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Aldhouse-Green, M. 2015. Bog Bodies Schiffer, M. B. 2002. Formation
Uncovered: Solving Europe’s Ancient Processes of the Archaeological
Mystery. Thames & Hudson: London Record. University of Utah Press:
& New York. Salt Lake City.
Binford, L. R. 2002. In Pursuit of the Sheets, P. D. 2006. The Ceren Site:
Past: Decoding the Archaeological An Ancient Village Buried by Volcanic
Record. University of California Press: Ash in Central America (2nd ed.).
Berkeley & London. Wadsworth: Stamford, CT.
Lillie, M. C. & Ellis, S. (eds). 2007. Wetland
Archaeology and Environments: [See p. 345 for a list of useful websites]

3 Where?
Survey and Excavation
of Sites and Features
Locating Archaeological Sites

and Features 64
Ground Survey 65
❑ Sampling Strategies 69
Aerial Survey 70
Geographic Information Systems 79
❑ Survey and Excavation on the
Giza Plateau 81
Assessing the Layout of Sites

and Features 82
Site Surface Survey 82
Subsurface Detection 86
Ground-based Remote Sensing 87
❑ Measuring Magnetism 90
Excavation 91
Stratigraphy 91
Methods of Excavation 93
❑ Jamestown Rediscovery:
The Excavation Process 94

Excavating in the Digital Age 97
❑ Excavating an Urban Site 98
Underwater Archaeology 100

Recovery and Recording of the
Evidence 102
Processing and Classification 103
Study Questions 105

Summary 106
Further Reading 106
Traditionally, archaeologists are known for finding and excavating
sites, but today, while sites and their excavation do remain of paramount
importance, the focus has broadened. Archaeologists have become aware
that there is a great range of off-site or non-site evidence, from scatters
of artifacts to such features as plowmarks and field boundaries, that provides
important information about the past. The study of entire landscapes by
regional survey, for example, is now a major part of archaeological fieldwork.
It should also not be forgotten that suitable evidence for study often comes
from new work at sites already the subject of fieldwork. Much potentially
rich and rewarding material also lies locked away in museum and institution
vaults, waiting to be analyzed by imaginative modern techniques. It is only
recently, for example, that the plant remains discovered in Tutankhamun’s
tomb in the 1920s have received thorough analysis. Yet it remains true that the
great majority of archaeological research is still dependent on the collection
of new material by fresh fieldwork. The main way that archaeologists find this
new material—in other words new sites and features—is by survey, either on
the ground or from the air.
In the early days of archaeology the next step would have been to excavate.
But when archaeologists excavate a site, digging through the layers of
evidence, uncovering features and removing artifacts that may have been
lying undisturbed for thousands of years, it is important to remember that
this is essentially a destructive act—there is just one chance to record exactly
what is found and the “experiment” can never be repeated. Excavation is also
very expensive, but after the digging the excavators must be prepared to put
considerable time, effort, and money into the conservation and storage of
their finds, and into the interpretation and publication of their results. Non-
destructive means of assessing the layout of sites and features, using, for
example, site surface survey or remote sensing devices, have therefore taken
on a new importance, often providing enough information for archaeologists
to interpret features at a site, and making large-scale excavation unnecessary.
3 • Where? 63
Although excavation does remain a very important aspect of archaeology,
Key Concepts archaeologists are becoming increasingly aware that it should not be
Research Design undertaken lightly, and that it is only absolutely vital where sites would
otherwise be destroyed by modern development or natural erosion.
Formulation of a research strategy Before any archaeological fieldwork begins, archaeologists try to make
to resolve a particular question or explicit what their objectives are and what their plan of campaign will be.
test a hypothesis or idea This procedure is commonly called devising a research design, which
broadly has four stages (listed in the box at left). There is seldom if ever a
Collecting and recording of
evidence against which to test
straightforward progression through these stages. In real life the research
that idea, usually by organizing a strategy will constantly be refined as evidence is collected and analyzed.
team of specialists and conducting All too often, and inexcusably, publication may be neglected. But in the best-
fieldwork—whether survey or planned research the overall objective—the broad question or questions to
excavation or both
be answered—will stand, even if the strategy for achieving it alters.
Processing and analysis of that
In this chapter we are focusing on stage 2 of the research process—on the
evidence and its interpretation in the methods and techniques archaeologists use to obtain evidence against which
light of the original idea to be tested to test their ideas. We will distinguish between methods used in the discovery
of archaeological sites and non-site features or artifact scatters, which include
Publication of the results in articles,
a variety of ground-based and aerial survey techniques, and those employed
books, etc.
once those sites and features have been identified, which include detailed
survey and selective excavation at individual sites.
The Great Wall of China, more than 2000 km Locating Archaeological Sites and Features
(1250 miles) long, was begun in the third
century bce. Like the pyramids of Egypt,
One major task of the archaeologist is to locate and record the whereabouts
it has never been lost to posterity. of sites and features. In this section we will be reviewing some of the
principal techniques used to locate sites. But we should not forget that many
monuments have never been lost: the massive pyramids of Egypt have always
been known to succeeding generations, as has the Great Wall of China. Their
exact function or purpose may indeed have aroused controversy down the
centuries, but their presence, the fact of their existence, was never in doubt.
And not all those sites that were once lost were discovered by
archaeologists. No one has ever made a precise count, but a significant
number of sites known today were found by accident, from the decorated
French cave of Lascaux, and more recently Cosquer, the underwater entrance
to which was discovered by a deep-sea diver in 1985, to the amazing terracotta
army of China’s first emperor, unearthed in 1974 by farmers digging for a
well, as well as the countless underwater wrecks first spotted by fishermen,
sponge-gatherers, and sport-divers. Construction workers building new roads,
subways, dams, and office blocks have made their fair share of discoveries too.
Nevertheless, it is archaeologists who have systematically attempted to
record these sites, and it is archaeologists who seek out the full range of
sites and features, large or small, that make up the great diversity of past
landscapes. How do they achieve this?
64 3 • Where?
A practical distinction can be drawn between site identification conducted
at ground level (ground survey) and identification from the air or from space
(aerial survey), although any one field project will usually employ both types
of survey.
Ground Survey
Methods for identifying individual sites include the consultation of
documentary sources and place-name evidence, but primarily actual
fieldwork, whether the monitoring of building developers’ progress in
“applied archaeology” (see pp. 324–27), or survey in circumstances where
the archaeologist is more of a free agent.
Documentary SourceS. In the nineteenth century, Homer’s account

of the Trojan Wars in his narrative poem the Iliad fired the imagination of
German banker Heinrich Schliemann, sending him on a quest for the city
of Troy; with remarkable luck and good judgment he successfully identified
it in western Turkey. A more recent success story of the same kind was the
location and excavation by Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad of the Viking
settlement of L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, thanks in large part
to clues contained in the medieval Viking sagas. Much of modern biblical
archaeology concerns itself with the search in the Near East for evidence of
the places—as well as the people and events—described in the Old and New
Testaments. Treated objectively as one possible source of information about
Near Eastern sites, the Bible can be a rich source of documentary material,
but there is certainly the danger that belief in the absolute religious truth
of the texts can cloud an impartial assessment of their archaeological validity.
Much research in biblical archaeology involves attempting to link
named biblical sites with archaeologically known ones. Place-name evidence,
however, can also lead to actual discoveries of new archaeological sites.
In southwestern Europe, for example, many prehistoric stone tombs have
been found thanks to old names printed on maps that incorporate local words
for “stone” or “tomb.”
The low mounds at L’Anse aux Meadows

turned out to be the remains of huts with
walls of piled turf and roofs of turf supported
by a wood frame—those seen here have
been reconstructed for visitors. Lack of
evidence for rebuilding indicates that this
was a short-lived settlement.
Locating Archaeological Sites and Features 65

cultural reSource management anD applieD archaeology. In this
specialized work—discussed more fully in Chapter 12—the archaeologist’s role
is to locate and record sites, in some cases before they are destroyed by new
roads, buildings, or dams, or by peatcutting and drainage in wetlands.
In the USA a large number of sites are located and recorded in inventories
every year under Cultural Resource Management (CRM) laws, which were
considerably broadened and strengthened in the 1970s. Proper liaison with
a developer should allow archaeological survey to take place in advance along
the projected line of road or in the path of development. Important sites
thus discovered may require excavation, and in some cases can even cause
construction plans to be altered. Certain archaeological remains unearthed
during the digging of subways in Rome and Mexico City, for instance, were
incorporated into the final station architecture.
Survey. How does the archaeologist set about locating sites, other than
through documentary sources and salvage work? A conventional and still
valid method is to look for the most prominent remains in a landscape,
particularly surviving remnants of walled buildings, and burial mounds,
such as those in eastern North America or Wessex in southern Britain.
But many sites are visible on the surface only as a scatter of artifacts and
thus require more thorough survey—what we may call survey—to be detected.
Furthermore, in recent years, as archaeologists have become more interested
in reconstructing the full human use of the landscape, they have begun to
realize that there are very faint scatters of artifacts that might not qualify as
sites, but that nevertheless represent significant human activity. Some scholars
have suggested that these off-site or non-site areas (that is, areas with a low
density of artifacts) should be located and recorded, which can only be done
by systematic survey work involving careful sampling procedures (see p. 69).
This approach is particularly useful in areas where people leading a mobile
way of life have left only a sparse archaeological record, as in much of Africa.
Survey has become important for another major reason: the growth of
regional studies. Thanks to the pioneering researches of such scholars as
Gordon Willey in the Virú Valley, Peru, and William T. Sanders in the Basin
of Mexico, archaeologists increasingly seek to study settlement patterns—
the distribution of sites across the landscape within a given region. The
significance of such work for the understanding of past societies is discussed
further in Chapter 5. Here we may note its impact on archaeological fieldwork:
it is rarely enough now simply to locate an individual site and then to survey
it and/or excavate it in isolation from other sites. Whole regions need to be
explored, involving a program of surveys.
In the last few decades, survey has developed from being simply a
preliminary stage in fieldwork (looking for appropriate sites to excavate)
66 3 • Where?
to a more or less independent kind of inquiry, an area of research in its own
right that can produce information quite different from that achieved by
digging. In some cases excavation may not take place at all, perhaps because
permission to dig was not forthcoming, or because of a lack of time or
funds—modern excavation is slow and costly, whereas survey is cheap, quick,
relatively non-destructive, and requires only maps, compasses, and tapes.
Usually, however, archaeologists deliberately choose a surface approach as a
source of regional data in order to investigate specific questions that interest
them and that excavation could not answer.
Survey encompasses a broad range of techniques: no longer just the
identification of sites and the recording or collection of surface artifacts, but
sometimes also the sampling of natural and mineral resources, such as stone
and clay. Much survey today is aimed at studying the spatial distribution of
human activities, variations between regions, changes in population through
time, and relationships between people, land, and resources.
Survey in practice. For questions formulated in regional terms, it is

necessary to collect data on a regional scale, but in a way that provides a
maximum of information for a minimum of cost and effort. First, the region
to be surveyed needs to be defined: its boundaries may be either natural
(such as a valley or island), cultural (such as the extent of an artifact style),
or purely arbitrary, though natural boundaries are the easiest to establish.
The area’s history of development needs to be examined, not only to
familiarize oneself with previous archaeological work and with the local
materials but also to assess the extent to which surface material may have
been covered or removed by natural processes. There is little point, for
example, in searching for prehistoric material in sediments only recently laid
down by river action. Other factors may have affected surface evidence as well.
In much of Africa, for example, great animal herds or burrowing animals will
often have disturbed surface material, so that the archaeologist may be able to
examine only very broad distribution patterns. Geologists and environmental
specialists can generally provide useful advice.
This background information will help determine the intensity of the
surface coverage of the survey. Other factors to take into consideration are the
time and resources available, and how easy it is actually to reach and record an
area. Arid (dry) and semi-arid environments with little vegetation are among
the best for this type of work, whereas in equatorial rainforest, survey may
be limited to soil exposures along river banks, unless time and labor permit
the cutting of trails. Many regions, of course, contain a variety of landscapes,
and more than one strategy for survey is often needed. Moreover, it must be
remembered that some archaeological phases (with easily distinguishable
artifacts or pottery styles, for example) are more visible than others, and that

mobile hunter-gatherer or pastoral communities leave a very different—
and generally sparser—imprint on the landscape than do agricultural or urban
communities. All these factors must be taken into account when planning
search patterns and recovery techniques.
There are two basic kinds of survey: the unsystematic and the systematic.
The former is the simpler, involving walking across each part of the area
(for example, each plowed field), scanning a strip of ground, collecting or
examining artifacts on the surface, and recording their location together with
that of any surface features. It is generally felt, however, that the results may be
biased: walkers have an inherent desire to find material, and will therefore tend
to concentrate on those areas that seem richer, rather than obtaining a sample
representative of the whole area that would enable the archaeologist to assess
the varying distribution of material of different periods or types. On the other
hand, the method is flexible, enabling the team to focus greater efforts on the
areas that have proved most likely to contain sites or finds.
Much modern survey is done in a systematic way, employing either a grid
system or a series of equally spaced transects (straight paths) across the
Key Concepts area. The area to be searched is divided into sectors, and these are walked
Locating Sites Using systematically. Because of the constraints of time and money, it is often not
Ground Survey possible to survey the entirety of an area in this way, so archaeologists have
to employ a sampling strategy (see box opposite) where only certain sectors
Documentary Sources: mainly of or transects are picked to be searched. Systematic survey also makes it easier
use in locating Classical, biblical,
to plot the location of finds since an exact position is always known.
and relatively recent sites
For example, from 1992 to 1998 the Sydney Cyprus Survey Project, led by
Cultural Resource Management: Bernard Knapp and Michael Given of the University of Glasgow in Scotland,
sites in areas that may be under undertook an intensive archaeological survey in a 75-sq. km (29-sq. mile)
threat from development are area in the northern Troodos Mountains of Cyprus. This is an area famed
located, recorded, and sometimes
for its copper sulphide ore deposits, exploited as early as the Bronze Age.
excavated prior to their destruction
The project examined the human transformation of the landscape over a
Survey: surveys can be period of 5000 years and placed it in its regional context. A first requirement
either unsystematic (where for the systematic intensive survey strategy was good maps. Enlarged aerial
archaeologists randomly search an photographs were used to create a base map of the entire survey region. The
area on foot for artifacts or evidence
main survey approach was a transect survey with the aim of obtaining a broad
of features) or, more commonly,
systematic (where archaeologists
systematic sample of the area; areas with extensive evidence of early industrial,
walk an area using carefully laid agricultural, or settlement activities, and locales with high densities of artifacts,
out grid systems or transects). were investigated more closely. It took the team around 6 years to survey just
A sampling strategy, where only 10 percent of the area. The survey identified 11 Special Interest Areas and 142
a representative part of an area
Places of Special Interest for investigation. The count in the field totalled 87,600
is actually searched, is often used
to save time and money. Small-scale
sherds of pottery, 8111 tile fragments, and 3092 lithics. About one third of these
excavations can be undertaken to were collected and analyzed and entered into the project’s database.
check survey results Results tend to be more reliable from long-term projects that cover a region
repeatedly, since the visibility of sites and artifacts can vary widely from year
68 3 • Where?
Sampling
Strategies
Archaeologists cannot usually afford areas being allotted clusters of squares, preferable to squares, particularly
the time and money necessary to while others remain untouched—the in areas of dense vegetation, such
investigate the whole of a large site or sample is, therefore, inherently biased. as tropical rainforest. It is far easier
all sites in a given region, so they need One answer is the stratified random to walk along a path than to locate
to sample the area being researched. sample, where the region or site is accurately and investigate a square.
In a ground survey this will involve using divided into its natural zones (strata, In addition, transects can easily be
one of the methods described below hence the technique’s name), such segmented into units, whereas it may
to choose a number of smaller areas to as cultivated land and forest, and be difficult to locate or describe a
be searched, with the objective being squares are then chosen by the same specific part of a square; transects are
to draw reliable conclusions about the random-number procedure, except equally useful not merely for finding
whole area. that each zone has the number of sites but also for recording artifact
The way archaeologists use sampling squares proportional to its area. Thus, densities across the landscape. On
is similar to the way it is employed if forest comprises 85 percent of the the other hand, squares have the
in public opinion polls, which make area, it must be allotted 85 percent of advantage of exposing more area to the
generalizations about the opinions the squares. survey, thus increasing the probability
of millions of people using samples Another solution, systematic of intersecting sites. A combination of
of just a few thousand. Surprisingly sampling, entails the selection of the two methods is often best: using
often the polls are more or less right. a grid of equally spaced locations— transects to cover long distances, but
This is because the structure of e.g. choosing every other square. squares when larger concentrations of
sampled populations is well known— By adopting such a regular spacing material are encountered.
for example, we know their ages and one runs the risk of missing (or hitting)
occupations. We have much less every single example in an equally
background information to work with in regular pattern of distribution—this
archaeology, so must be more careful is another source of potential bias.
when we extrapolate generalizations A more satisfactory method is to
from a sample. But as with opinion polls, use a stratified unaligned systematic
in archaeological work the larger and sample, which combines the main
better designed the sample, the more elements from the other techniques.
N
likely the results are to be valid. In collecting artifacts from the surface
Some sites in a given region, of a large tell or mound site at Girik-i-
65ft
however, may be more accessible Haciyan in Turkey, Charles Redman 20m
than others, or more prominent in the and Patty Jo Watson used a grid of 5-m
landscape, which may prompt a more squares, but orientated the grid along A B
informal sampling strategy. Long years the site’s main N-S/E-W axes. The
of experience in the field will also give squares were selected with reference
some archaeologists an intuitive “feel” to these axes. The strata chosen were
for the right places to undertake work. blocks of nine squares (3 x 3), and one
square in each block was picked for
Types of Sampling excavation by selecting its N-S/E-W
The simplest form is a simple random coordinates randomly. C D
sample, where the areas to be sampled

are chosen using a table of random Transects vs Squares Types of sampling: (A) simple random;
numbers. The nature of random In large-scale surveys, transects (B) stratified random; (C) systematic;
numbers, however, results in some (straight paths) are sometimes (D) stratified unaligned systematic.
Sampling Strategies 69
to year or even with the seasons, thanks to vegetation and changing land-
use. In addition, members of field crews inevitably differ in the accuracy of
their observations, and in their ability to recognize and describe sites (the
more carefully we look, and the more experience we have, the more we see);
this factor can never be totally eliminated, but repeated coverage can help to
counter its effects. The use of standardized recording forms makes it easy
to put the data into a computer at a later stage; alternatively, handheld
computers can be used in the field.
Finally, it may be necessary or desirable to carry out small excavations
to supplement or check the surface data (particularly for questions of
chronology, contemporaneity, or site function), or to test hypotheses that have
arisen from the survey. The two types of investigation are complementary,
not mutually exclusive. Their major difference can be summarized as follows:
excavation tells us a lot about a little of a site, and can only be done once,
whereas survey tells us a little about a lot of sites, and can be repeated.
ExtEnsivE and intEnsivE survEy. Surveys can be made more extensive

by combining results from a series of individual projects in neighboring
regions to produce very large-scale views of change in landscape, land-use,
and settlement through time—though, as with individual members of a field
crew, the accuracy and quality of different survey projects may vary widely.
Alternatively survey can be made more intensive by aiming at total coverage
of a single large site or site-cluster. It is a paradox that some of the world’s
Systematic surface survey in the Egyptian greatest and most famous archaeological sites have never, or only recently,
desert: using GPS, archaeologists sample
small areas spaced 100 m (330 ft.) apart,
been studied in this way, since attention has traditionally focused on the
looking for Middle Paleolithic stone tools grander monuments rather than on any attempt to place them within even
(top). Finds are then processed in the field
using electronic calipers and handheld
a local context. At Teotihuacan, near Mexico City, a major mapping project
computers (above). initiated in the 1960s has added hugely to our knowledge of the area around
the great pyramid-temples (see pp. 82–84).
Ground survey has a vital place in archaeological work, and one that
continues to grow in importance. In modern projects, however, it is usually
supplemented (and often preceded) by survey from the air, one of the most
important advances made by archaeology in the twentieth century. In fact,
the availability of air photographs can be an important factor in selecting
and delineating an area for ground survey.
Aerial Survey
Archaeological survey using airborne or spaceborne remote sensing can be
divided into two component parts: data collection, which comprises taking
photographs or images from aircraft or satellites; and data analysis, in which
such images are analyzed, interpreted, and (often) integrated with other
70 3 • Where?
evidence from field survey, ground-based remote sensing, or documentary
evidence. From the viewpoint of the photo interpreter or image analyst there
is little difference between satellite images, multispectral/hyperspectral data,
and traditional air photographs other than that of scale and resolution.
The source itself is irrelevant and these data will collectively be referred to
as “aerial images.”
Millions of aerial images have already been taken: some of these are
available for consultation in specialist libraries, and a lesser quantity is freely
available online. Most result from “area survey” in which aerial images are
Aerial photographs are of two types: oblique taken in overlapping series to cover predefined areas, and a small number are
and vertical. Obliques are easier to view and
understand than verticals but may present
taken each year by archaeologists who undertake prospective surveys using a
more difficulty to the interpreter, who must light aircraft. It must be stressed that aerial images, even those resulting from
transform the information to plan views.
The photo (bottom) is an oblique aerial
prospective survey, are used for a wide range of archaeological purposes, from
photograph of Newark earthworks, Ohio. the discovery and recording of sites, to monitoring changes in them through
An octagon and circle joined by a small strip
of land are clearly visible, as are the small
time, photographing buildings, urban (and other) development—and, in fact,
mounds just inside the octagon’s corners. recording almost anything that “may not be there tomorrow.” Nevertheless,
the taking and analysis of aerial images from aircraft
or satellite have led to a large number of archaeological
Oblique image
discoveries, and the tally grows every year.
how are aerial imageS uSeD? Images taken from

Vertical image
Better for pictorial effect and the air are merely tools; they are means to an end.
perspective
Images do not themselves reveal sites—it is the image
Better for making taker and the interpreter who do so, by examination
maps and plans
of the terrain and the pictures. These are specialized
skills. Long experience and a keen eye are needed to
differentiate archaeological traces from other features,
such as vehicle tracks, old river beds, and canals.
Indeed, most military intelligence units during the
final years of World War II had archaeologists on their
staff as interpreters of air photographs.
Aerial images are of two types: oblique and vertical.
Each has its advantages and drawbacks, but oblique
images have usually been taken of sites observed from
the air by an archaeologist and thought to be of archae-
ological significance, whereas most vertical images
result from non-archaeological surveys (for instance,
cartographic). Both types can be used to provide
overlapping stereoscopic pairs of prints that enable a
scene to be examined in three dimensions and so add
confidence to any interpretation. Stereoscopic pictures
taken of the ancient city of Mohenjodaro in Pakistan

from a tethered balloon, for example, have enabled photogrammetric—
accurately contoured—plans to be made of its surviving structures. Similarly,
large areas can be surveyed with overlapping images, which are then processed
into a very accurate photogrammetric base map of all the archaeological
evidence identified from the air. Analytical ground survey can then proceed
on a much surer basis.
Oblique images are often targeted on archaeological features that may
show clearly, while vertical images may need to be more thoroughly examined
by an interpreter seeking such information. Both types of image can be
rectified or georeferenced using computer programs. This removes the scale
and perspective distortions of oblique images and can correct for tilt and
distortion in vertical views. After computer transformation the resulting
image may be layered in graphics software or a GIS (Geographic Information
System—see pp. 79–82) and interpreted by overdrawing the archaeological
features that have been identified.
The clearest way to indicate what a person has identified on aerial images is
to produce a map that shows their interpretation. Such maps have many uses:
to provide a guide for conservation and management; to show the relations
between sites and their environment; to give context for field-walking; and
to show accurate locations of archaeological features for ground surveys. For
example, although it was known that prehistoric roadways existed within
Chaco Canyon in the American Southwest, it was only when a major aerial
survey project was undertaken by the National Park Service in the 1970s
that the full extent of the road system was appreciated. Using the extensive
coverage provided by the aerial images, a whole network of prehistoric
roadways was identified and mapped. This was followed by selective ground
surveys and some archaeological investigation. From the aerial coverage it has
been estimated that the network, thought to date to the eleventh and twelfth
centuries ce, extends to some 2400 km (1500 miles), though of this only 208 km
(130 miles) have been verified by examination at ground level.
iDentifying archaeological SiteS from above. Successful identification

of archaeological sites on aerial images requires knowledge of the types of
feature that might be expected and of the post-depositional (formation)
processes that may have affected them since their abandonment. In general,
for a site to be detected by any remote sensing method, it needs to have altered
the soil or subsoil. These alterations can vary between holes cut into the
ground (such as ditches and pits) and features placed upon it (such as banks,
mounds, and walls), and these may now survive in relief—i.e. as lumps and
bumps on the surface—or be completely buried under leveled cultivated land.
It is important to remember that similar holes and bumps may have been
caused by natural disturbances or from recent human activity (leveling field
72 3 • Where?
(Right) How crop-marks are formed: crops
grow taller and more thickly over sunken
features, such as ditches (1), and show
stunted growth over buried walls (2). Such
SOIL
variations may not be obvious at ground
2
level, but are often visible from the air, as 1
different-colored bands of vegetation.
(Below) Features in relief on the left of

this photograph show the remains of a
Romano-British farm at Holbeach in the
boundaries or digging small quarries, for example), and an experienced
East Anglian fens of eastern England. image analyst should be able to identify these, and distinguish them from
Ditches were cut to form field and other
property boundaries, flank tracks, and drain
archaeological features, in an area with which they are familiar.
the land. These features continue into the Aerial images record relief sites through a combination of highlight and
field on the right, where they have been
filled and are now under a level field growing
shadow, so the time of day and season of the year are important factors in
cereal. The track that runs across the upper creating the most informative image of such sites. It may be necessary to
part of the left field can be seen to the right,
marked by a darker band where crop growth
obtain images taken at different times to maximize the information visible
has been boosted by the deeper soil that fills through light and shade, although such new techniques as LIDAR (Light
the former ditch. Silted channels of former
watercourses show as broad light-toned
Detection and Ranging)—also known as ALS (Airborne Laser Scanning)—
bands where the crop is growing sparsely allow a viewer to move the position of the sun at will (see overleaf).
in poorer soil. These differences illustrate
how changes in crop growth can mark
In some parts of the world, archaeological sites have been leveled and now
subsurface features. lie in arable land. Although these sites have suffered a degree of destruction

(and many continue to be destroyed by annual cultivation), these landscapes
can be rewarding when examined on aerial images. In summer months, crops
may grow differently above different soils and above different depths of soil
and can thus indicate the presence of archaeological and natural features.
These crop differences, sometimes called crop-marks, have been the main way
in which aerial survey has recorded the presence of archaeological features;
indeed, more features have been discovered via crop-marks than with any
other form of prospection.
recent DevelopmentS. New technology is having an impact on aerial

survey in different ways. Although the majority of existing images have been
taken on film—black and white, color, or false color infrared—primarily digital
sensors are now used in precision vertical cameras and the handheld cameras
used by airborne archaeologists. Modern flying, be this to capture a series of
parallel overlapping strips of vertical photographs or to examine a chosen area
Key Concepts by an archaeologist, is usually planned and recorded to take advantage of GPS
Locating Sites Using (Global Positioning System) navigation.
Aerial Survey The application of digital image analysis is now a basic element in
the survey archaeologist’s toolkit. Just as in excavation and aerial survey,
Aerial Photography: aerial remote sensing research must be well planned and well executed, using a
photographs can be either oblique comprehensive methodology. Automated and semi-automated image analysis
(better for pictorial effect and is commonplace in disciplines such as environmental remote sensing, where
perspective) or vertical (better
work is undertaken on extensive datasets. Field observations, archaeological
for maps and plans). Features
visible from the air are classed interpretation, and human expertise, however, remain indispensable.
as either earthworks, soil-marks, The use of drones (or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles—UAVs) has become
or crop-marks increasingly popular. Small battery-powered drones carry a range of
instruments and cameras and can take scores of pictures that produce an
Drones: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
overlapping set, recording a site, excavation, or feature from all possible
(UAVs) are now commonly used to
produce overlapping sets of pictures angles. Structure from Motion (SfM) software can combine these images
and 3D models of sites to produce a 3D model that can be georeferenced and used for making
accurate drawings.
LIDAR: a new laser-scanning
technique that can accurately map
liDar anD Slar. Use of LIDAR has proved extremely valuable in the past
whole landscapes, even beneath
tree cover. Resulting digital plans
few years. This technique uses an aircraft (or drone), whose exact position is
can be manipulated to reveal such known through GPS, carrying a laser scanner that rapidly pulses a series of
subtle features as the remains of beams to the ground. By measuring the time taken for these to return to the
ancient field systems aircraft an accurate picture of the ground in the form of a digital elevation
model (or digital surface model) is created. Software used with LIDAR
Satellite Photography: useful
primarily at the largest scales, for
provides archaeologists with two great advantages over conventional aerial
example mapping very large sites photography: tree canopies can be eliminated by switching off the “first
or tracing ancient irrigation systems return,” so the sensor can see into woodland; and the angle and azimuth of
the sun can be moved to enable ground features to be viewed under optimal
74 3 • Where?
LIDAR in operation: the Iron Age hillfort of (and sometimes naturally impossible) lighting. Both facilities have been
Welshbury in the Forest of Dean, England,
is almost invisible in conventional aerial
used to advantage in England where new sites—mostly enlargements to field
photographs (left). The initial LIDAR image systems—have been found, and locational corrections made to the existing
shows little improvement (center) but
once reflections from leaves and trees
record of the landscape around Stonehenge.
(the “first return”) have been filtered out An excellent example of the practical application of LIDAR to an
using a software algorithm the earthworks
are clearly visible (right).
archaeological site comes from Caracol, a Maya city in Belize that flourished
between 550 and 900 ce. Arlen and Diane Chase of the University of Nevada
have been excavating at this site for more than twenty-five years, and during
that time, despite the dense tropical forest, had managed to map 23 sq. km
(9 sq. miles) of settlement. Survey from the air, however, enabled them
within a few weeks to surpass the results of those twenty-five years, by
covering a far larger area and discovering that the city actually extended over
177 sq. km (68 sq. miles). Images taken at the end of the dry season in 2009
took about four days (twenty-four hours of flight time) to capture, the small
aircraft passing back and forth over the city, and making more than 4 billion
measurements of the landscape below. This was then followed by three
weeks of analysis by remote sensing experts.
Caracol’s entire landscape can now be viewed in 3D, which has led to the
discovery of new ruins, agricultural terraces, and stone causeways leading
to more distant settlements (see illustration overleaf). This was the first
application of LIDAR to such a large archaeological site, and it is clear that
the technique will radically transform research on sites in challenging
environments of this kind. However, just as only excavation can verify the
findings of ground-based remote sensing, so the data produced from the air
at Caracol will need to be confirmed on the ground.

Caracol
MEXICO
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BELIZE
Only a tiny proportion of the city of Caracol's Another remote sensing technique, Side-Looking Airborne Radar (SLAR),
total area has been cleared of jungle—the
photo (top) shows Plaza A at the site, closely
has yielded evidence suggesting that Maya agriculture was more intensive
surrounded by thick vegetation. A 3D LIDAR than previously imagined. The technique involves recording in radar images
projection of the site (above), however,
reveals the features beneath the jungle
the return of pulses of electromagnetic radiation sent out from a flying
canopy; agricultural terraces show up as aircraft. Since radar will penetrate cloud cover and to some extent dense
ripples in valleys and hillsides.
rainforest, Richard Adams and his colleagues were able to use SLAR from
a high-flying NASA aircraft to scan 80,000 sq. km (31,200 sq. miles) of the
Maya lowlands. The SLAR images revealed not only ancient cities and field
systems, but also an enormous lattice of gray lines, some of which may have
been canals, to judge by subsequent inspections by canoe. If field testing
reveals that the canals are ancient, it will show that the Maya had an elaborate
irrigation and water transport system.
76 3 • Where?
Satellite imagery anD google earth. It is now routine to access Google
Earth and use the high-resolution air photos and satellite cover there, or to
buy copies of them. The high-resolution images available from the IKONOS
(about 1 m resolution), QuickBird (60 cm), and GeoEye (40 cm) satellites offer
data comparable with aerial photographs, while Google Earth has basic world
cover from NASA’s LANDSAT series (28.5 m) but includes blocks of IKONOS,
QuickBird, and GeoEye images, some other satellite imagery, and some
conventional aerial photographs. The imagery can be imported into remote
sensing image-processing software, as well as into GIS packages for analysis.
The introduction of Google Earth has been a true aerial revolution, since
it offers every archaeologist the opportunity to examine the ground and look
for archaeological sites—for example, it is being used by paleontologists
in Africa to hunt for fossils, and in 2008 it revealed 500 new caves in South
Africa, including the one that yielded the bones of Australopithecus sediba
(see p. 135); and hundreds of new archaeological sites in Afghanistan are also
being discovered by this method. But the same rules of visibility apply to those
images as they do to conventional aerial photos, and absence of evidence on
one particular date is not evidence of absence. Most users have never been
trained to interpret such images and many expect sites to be visible at all times.
QuickBird and IKONOS/GeoEye images can be taken to order, although the
Two satellite images of the Urartian citadel minimum cost may be high for some archaeological projects. Libraries of older
of Erebuni, near Yerevan, Armenia, founded
in 782 bce: on the left, with resolution of
images are lower in price. In parts of the world where maps are still regarded
about 2 m (10 ft.), is an image from the as secret or do not exist, an up-to-date satellite image may be the only way to
American CORONA series taken in 1971;
on the right is a higher resolution screen
provide a base map for archaeological investigations.
shot from Google Earth of a QuickBird image Much use has been made of the Cold War CORONA satellite photographs
taken in 2006. Both images are displayed
with south to the top so that shadows assist
(at best about 2 m resolution), and these too provide a useful base map
photo-reading of topography and structures. and allow provisional interpretation of sites that can later be checked by

fieldwork—for example, CORONA images have led to the detection and
detailed mapping of numerous kinds of archaeological remains, such as
ancient roads, ruins, irrigation networks, and so forth.
Jason Ur of Harvard University has used CORONA imagery to examine
linear trackways (“hollow ways”) across northern Mesopotamia (Syria,
Turkey, and Iraq). These broad and shallow features were formed over time
as people walked between settlements, and from settlements to fields and
pasture. Because depressed features collect moisture and vegetation, they are
easily visible on CORONA images. Some 6025 km (3750 miles) of premodern
features have been identified, primarily dating to a phase of Bronze Age urban
expansion from around 2600 to 2000 bce. Most commonly, trackways radiated
out 2–5 km (1–3 miles) from sites, in a spoke-like pattern. Although there were
several major centers, all movement was done by moving from place to place;
no direct tracks existed between the major centers. From that we can deduce
CORONA photograph (above, with false that political centralization and authority was probably weak.
color added) of radial trackways around Tell
Brak, northeastern Syria, dating from around
2600 to 2000 bce. Thousands of miles of other Satellite techniqueS. Another recent addition to the
trackways in the region have been mapped
by Jason Ur using a GIS database. The
archaeologist’s arsenal is SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar), in which multiple
area shown at top is about 80 km (50 miles) radar images (usually taken from space, but also from aircraft) are processed
wide. Tell Brak is at center right, north of the
Khabur River.
to yield extremely detailed high-resolution results that can provide data
for maps, databases, land-use studies, and so forth. SAR records height
information and can provide terrain models of territory being surveyed.
One of its many advantages is that, unlike conventional aerial photography,
it provides results day or night and regardless of weather conditions. It
can be used with multispectral data from satellites to make inventories of
archaeological sites in a survey area—a rapid, non-destructive alternative to
surface survey that does not involve the collection of artifacts and can thus
save a great deal of time and effort in some circumstances.
78 3 • Where?
The international Greater Angkor Project has found that the vast ruins of
the 1000-year-old temple complex of Angkor in northern Cambodia may cover
an area of up to 3000 sq. km (11,500 sq. miles). The ruins, shrouded in dense
jungle and surrounded by landmines, have been the subject of studies using
high-resolution SAR imagery obtained from NASA satellites. The resulting dark
squares and rectangles on the images are stone moats and reflecting pools
around the temples. The most important discovery for archaeologists so far has
been the network of ancient canals surrounding the city (visible as light lines)
that irrigated rice fields and fed the pools and moats. They were probably also
used to transport the massive stones needed for constructing the complex.
ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection
Radiometer) is an imaging instrument that flies on Terra, a satellite launched
in 1999 as part of NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS), and is used to obtain
detailed maps of land surface temperature, reflectance, and elevation.
Satellite remote sensing projects carried out by those with backgrounds
in both remote sensing and archaeology have much to offer, but satellite
archaeology should not be regarded as a substitute for archaeological
excavation or survey work. It is just one among a number of tools that
archaeologists may want to employ in their research. Besides revealing the
A satellite image of the huge ancient site of presence of (sub)surface archaeological features (even in areas previously
Angkor in Cambodia.
surveyed), satellite remote sensing can place archaeological sites in a much
larger context, showing past social landscapes in all their complexity and
helping greatly with quality assessment. Analysis of satellite imagery may
further aid in determining where to excavate and may precede archaeological
survey. Archaeologists will therefore need to rethink their surveying and
excavation strategies in light of this new information, especially as image
resolution continues to increase.
Geographic Information Systems

The standard approach to archaeological mapping is now the use of
Geographic Information Systems (GIS), described in one official report as
“the biggest step forward in the handling of geographic information since
the invention of the map.” A GIS is a collection of computer hardware
and software and of geographic data, designed to obtain, store, manage,
manipulate, analyze, and display a wide range of spatial information. A GIS
combines a database with powerful digital mapping tools. GIS developed out
of computer-aided design and computer-aided mapping (CAD/CAM) programs
during the 1970s. Some CAD programs, such as AutoCAD, can be linked to
commercial databases and have proved valuable in allowing the automatic
mapping of archaeological sites held in a computer database. A true GIS,
however, also incorporates the ability to carry out a statistical analysis of site
distribution, and to generate new information.

A GIS may include an enormous amount of topographic and environmental
data on relief, communications, hydrology, etc. To make the information
easier to handle, it can be divided into different layers, each representing
a single variable (see illustration at left). Archaeological data may themselves
DATA LAYERS
be split into several layers, often so that each layer represents a discrete time-
slice. As long as they can be spatially located, many different types of data
can be integrated, including site plans, satellite images, aerial photographs,
geophysical survey, as well as maps. A good example of many different types
of data being incorporated into a GIS is the Giza Plateau Mapping Project
in Egypt (see box opposite).
The ability to incorporate aerial imagery can be particularly valuable
for site survey, as it can provide detailed and current land-use information.
Actual
landscape Many topographic data already exist in the form of digital maps that can
be taken directly into a GIS. Knowing exact ground coordinates is essential
in archaeological practice for mapping purposes and learning about
Diagram showing possible GIS data layers: distribution patterns. This is done by means of a handheld GPS, which
from top to bottom, drainage, human activity,
and relief.
allows archaeologists to map their ground position (in some cases to within
as little as 3 cm) by connecting to a global satellite system. A minimum of
four satellites has to be communicating with the GPS to provide close X and
Y data, which can display the received information in longitude/latitude
(degrees, minutes, seconds), or to a UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator)
coordinate system that provides data in eastings and northings. These data
are extremely useful where a region is unmapped, or where the maps are
old or inaccurate.
Once the basic outlines of a site have been mapped with reasonable
accuracy by means of the GPS, and control points placed around the site,
standard practice is to use a total station to record its more detailed features
to a greater degree of accuracy. This instrument is an electronic theodolite
integrated with an electronic distance meter, used to read distances to a
particular point. Angles and distances are measured from the total station
to points under survey and the coordinates (X, Y, Z, or northing, easting,
and elevation) of the surveyed points relative to the total station position
are calculated. These data can then be downloaded from the total station
to a computer to generate a map of the surveyed area. All the information
is recorded and then submitted as GIS data to the client or sponsoring
organization of the work as a matter of course.
Once data are stored within a GIS it is relatively straightforward to generate
maps on demand, and to query the database to select particular categories of
site to be displayed. Individual map layers, or combinations of layers, can be
selected according to the subject under investigation.
One of the earliest, and most widespread, uses of GIS within archaeology
has been the construction of predictive models of site locations. Most
80 3 • Where?
Survey and that built the pyramids. To the south of
the Great Sphinx, 4500-year-old paved
Excavation on streets have been uncovered, as well
Giza l
EGYPT
the Giza Plateau as various buildings, from barracks to
bakeries. The Giza Plateau Mapping
Project (GPMP) has so far exposed
a vast urban center attached to the
pyramids, sometimes known as the databases into a single organized
For nearly thirty years American “Lost City of the Pyramid Builders.” digital archive. This enables the team
Egyptologist Mark Lehner has been Directed by Camilla Mazzucato and to map patterns of architecture, burials,
systematically exploring Egypt’s Rebekah Miracle, GIS is being used artifacts, and other materials, such as
Giza Plateau in an effort to find the to integrate all the project’s drawings, foodstuffs: for example, it has been
settlements that housed the workforce forms, survey data, and artifact found that the people who resided in
the bigger houses ate the best meat
(beef) and fish (perch), while the others
ate more pig and goat. Color-coded
graphs and charts can be produced,
representing the densities and
distributions of various artifact types
in different areas, buildings, rooms,
or even features.
Data collected over almost 30 years,

incorporated in the GIS:
• over 6000 field drawings

• over 19,000 archaeological features
• survey and remote sensing data
• aerial and satellite imagery
• historical maps
• artifact/ecofact distribution information
(Above left) The Giza Plateau Mapping

Project began with an extremely accurate
survey of the cultural and natural features
of the entire area. The survey grid is centered
on the Great Pyramid.
(Left) Using digitized 1-meter contours of

the plateau and CAD data depicting the
Kh architectural components of the pyramid
en complex, the GPMP GIS team created a nearly
tk
aw three-dimensional surface called a TIN, or
es triangulated irregular network, over which they
To
w can lay other data layers, such as maps. Here
Menkaure n
Valley Temple (left), the GPMP survey grid is draped over the
surface of the plateau. The “Lost City of the
Pyramid Builders,” Heit el-Ghurab, is clearly
visible in the foreground.
Heit el-Ghurab Giza Plateau 81

of the development of these techniques has taken place within North
American archaeology, where the enormous spatial extent of some
archaeological landscapes means that it is not always possible to survey them
comprehensively. The underlying premise of all predictive models is that
particular kinds of sites tend to occur in the same kinds of place. For example,
certain settlement sites tend to occur close to sources of fresh water and on
southerly aspects, because these provide ideal conditions in which humans
can live (not too cold, and within easy walking distance of a water source).
Using this information it is possible to model how likely a given location is to
contain an archaeological site from the known environmental characteristics
of that location. In a GIS environment this operation can be undertaken for
an entire landscape, producing a predictive model map for the whole area.
An example was developed by the Illinois State Museum for the Shawnee
National Forest in southern Illinois. It predicts the likelihood of finding a
prehistoric site anywhere within the 91 sq. km (35 sq. miles) of the forest
by using the observed characteristics of the 68 sites that are known from
the 12 sq. km (4.6 sq. miles) that have been surveyed. A GIS database was
constructed for the entire area and the characteristics of the known sites were
compared with the characteristics of the locations known not to contain sites.
This resulted in a model that can be used to predict the likelihood that any
location with known characteristics will contain a prehistoric site.
Assessing the Layout of Sites and Features

Finding and recording sites and features is the first stage in fieldwork, but the
next stage is to make some assessment of site size, type, and layout. These are
crucial factors for archaeologists, not only for those who are trying to decide
whether, where, and how to excavate, but also for those whose main focus
may be site management, the study of settlement patterns, site systems, and
landscape archaeology, and who are not planning to carry out any excavation.
We have already seen how aerial images may be used to plot the layout of
sites as well as helping to locate them in the first place. What are the other
main methods for investigating sites without excavating them?
Site Surface Survey

The simplest way to gain some idea of a site’s extent and layout is through
a site surface survey—by studying the distribution of surviving features,
and recording and possibly collecting artifacts from the surface.
The Teotihuacan Mapping Project, for instance, used site surface survey
to investigate the layout and orientation of the city, which had been the
largest and most powerful urban center in Mesoamerica in its heyday from
200 to 650 ce. The layout and orientation of the city had intrigued scholars
for decades; however, they considered the grandiose pyramid-temples, plazas,
82 3 • Where?
N
0 2 km
0 1 mile
MEXICO
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Teotihuacan
(Above) Archaeological and topographic

map of Teotihuacan produced by the
Teotihuacan Mapping Project. The survey
grid system of 500-m squares is oriented to
the north–south axis of the city, in particular
the central “Street of the Dead” (dividing
W1 and E1 on the map).
(Right) View south along the Street of

the Dead, with the Pyramid of the Sun
prominent on the left, echoing the shape
of the mountain behind.
and the major avenue—an area now known as the ceremonial center—to be
the entire extent of the metropolis. It was not until the survey conducted
by the Teotihuacan Mapping Project that the outer limits, the great east–west
axis, and the grid plan of the city were discovered and defined.
Fortunately, structural remains lay just beneath the surface, so that the
team were able to undertake the mapping from a combination of aerial and
surface survey, with only small-scale excavation to test the survey results.
Millions of potsherds were collected, and more than 5000 structures and
activity areas recorded. Teotihuacan had been laid out on a regular plan, with
four quadrants orientated on the great north–south “Street of the Dead” and
another major avenue running east–west across it. Construction had occurred
over several centuries, but always following the master plan.
For artifacts and other objects collected or observed during site surface
survey, it may not be worth mapping their individual locations if they appear
to come from badly disturbed secondary contexts. Or there may simply be
too many artifacts to record all their individual proveniences. In this latter
instance the archaeologist will probably use sampling procedures for the
selective recording of finds. Where time and funds are sufficient and the site
is small enough, however, the collection and recording of artifacts from the
total site area may prove possible.
For example, a site surface survey was conducted at the Bronze Age city
of Mohenjodaro in Pakistan. Here, a team of archaeologists from Pakistan,
Germany, and Italy investigated the distribution of craft-working debris and
found, to their surprise, that craft activities were not confined to a specific
manufacturing zone within the city, but were scattered throughout the site,
representing assorted small-scale workshops.
reliability of Surface finDS. Archaeologists have always used limited

surface collection of artifacts as one way of trying to assess the date and layout
of a site prior to excavation. However, now that surface survey has become not
merely a preliminary to excavation, but also in some instances a substitute for
it—for cost and time reasons—a vigorous debate is taking place in archaeology
about how far surface traces do in fact reflect distributions below ground.
We would logically expect single-period or shallow sites to show the most
reliable surface evidence of what lies beneath. Equally one might predict that
multi-period, deep sites, such as Near Eastern village mounds, would show
few if any traces on the surface of the earliest and deepest levels. This is by
no means always true, however—for example, at Tell Halula in northern Syria,
a survey was carried out by an Australian team in 1986, involving the collection
of such artifacts as potsherds and stone tools from the surface, using
stratified random sampling procedures based on a grid system. 46 squares
in this grid were sampled, amounting to 4 percent of the 12.5-ha (31-acre) site
84 3 • Where?
Topography and
Tell Halula
Collection Areas Pre-Pottery Neolithic B
200m
l
Tigr
SYRIA
Eu
is R te
ph .
r
a
sR
.
8.0 ha
(Left) The survey Halaf Ubaid–Late Chalcolithic

and collection
team at Tell
Halula using
a theodolite.
2.3 ha
6.9 ha
Uruk–Early Bronze Age Middle–Late Iron Age
1.9 ha 1.2 ha
(Above) Plan of Tell Halula showing the layout of

collection squares, plus outline plans showing the
changing location and size of settlement during
five of the ten occupation phases.
(Left) CORONA satellite image of the Halula

district, showing the location of the tell and the
boundary of the sampling area.
area. Typological analysis of the artifacts made it possible to identify ten

major occupation phases, representing fifteen different cultural periods.
Those who support the validity of surface survey, while agreeing that
there is bound to be a quantitative bias in favor of the most recent periods on
the surface, nevertheless point out that one of the surprises for most survey
archaeologists is how many of their sites, if collected with care, are truly multi-
period, reflecting many phases of a site’s use, not just the latest one. The
reasons for this are not yet entirely clear, but they certainly have something to
do with the kind of formation processes discussed in Chapter 2—from erosion
and animal disturbance to such human activity as plowing.
The relationship between surface and subsurface evidence is undoubtedly
complex and varies from site to site. It is therefore wise wherever possible to
try to determine what really does lie beneath the ground, perhaps by digging
test pits (usually meter squares) to assess a site’s horizontal extent, or by more
thorough excavation (see below, pp. 91–105). There is, however, a whole battery
Assessing the Layout of Sites and Features 85

of subsurface detection devices that can be used before—or indeed sometimes
instead of—excavation, which of course is destructive as well as expensive.
Subsurface Detection
Probes. The most traditional technique is that of probing the soil with
rods or augers, and noting the positions where they strike solids or hollows.
Metal rods with a T-shaped handle are the most common, but augers—large
corkscrews with a similar handle—are also used, and have the advantage
of bringing samples of soil to the surface, clinging to the screw. Many
archaeologists use hand-held probes that yield small, solid cores. Probing of
this type was used, for example, by Chinese archaeologists to plot the 300 pits
remaining to be investigated near the first emperor’s famous buried terracotta
army. There is always, however, a risk of damaging fragile artifacts or features.
One notable advance in this technique was developed by Carlo Lerici in Italy
in the 1950s as part of the search for Etruscan tombs of the sixth century bce.
Having detected the precise location of a tomb through aerial photography
and soil resistivity (see pp. 88–89), he would bore down into it a hole 8 cm
(3 in.) in diameter, and insert a long tube with a periscope head and a light,
and also a tiny camera attached if needed. Lerici examined some 3500 Etruscan
tombs in this way, and found that almost all were completely empty, thus
saving future excavators a great deal of wasted effort. He also discovered more
than twenty with painted walls, thus doubling the known heritage of Etruscan
painted tombs at a stroke.
shovel-TesT PiTs (sTPs). To gain a preliminary idea of what lies beneath

the surface, small pits may often be dug into the ground at consistent
distances from each other; in Europe these are usually in the form of meter-
squares, but in some parts of North America small round holes are dug, about
the diameter of a dinner-plate and less than a meter deep. These pits help
show what an area has to offer, and help identify the extent of a possible site,
while analysis and plotting of the material retrieved from them by sieving
of the soil can produce maps showing areas with high concentrations of
different kinds of artifacts. This method is commonly employed as part of site
surveys for CRM projects in areas of the USA with poor surface visibility, such
as forested areas of the east coast.
Probing The Pyramids. Modern technology has taken such work even
further, with the development of the endoscope and miniature TV cameras.
In a project reminiscent of Lerici’s, a probe was carried out in 1987 of a boat
pit beside the Great Pyramid of Cheops (Khufu), in Egypt. This lies adjacent
to another pit, excavated in 1954, that contained the perfectly preserved and
disassembled parts of a 43-m- (141-ft.-) long royal cedarwood boat of the third
86 3 • Where?
millennium bce. The 1987 probe revealed that the unopened pit contained
all the dismantled timbers of a second boat. In 2008 a team from Waseda
University in Tokyo, Japan, inserted a second miniature camera to reexamine
the boat’s condition and ascertain whether it could be safely lifted.The covering
stone blocks and boat’s timbers were duly removed in 2011. Robot probes with
miniature cameras have been sent up two of the so-called “airshafts” of the
Great Pyramid to discover whether or not they link up to hidden chambers—
tantalizingly, stone blocking part-way up hinders further investigation.
Projects of this kind are beyond the resources of most archaeologists.
But in future, funds permitting, probes of this type could equally well be
applied to other Egyptian sites, to cavities in Maya structures, or to the many
unexcavated tombs in China. The Great Pyramid itself has been the subject
of further probes by French and Japanese teams, who believe it may contain as
yet undiscovered chambers or corridors. Using ultrasensitive microgravimetric
equipment—which is normally employed to search for deficiencies in dam
walls, and can tell if a stone has a hollow behind it—they detected what
they think is a cavity some 3 m (10 ft.) beyond one of the passage walls. Test
drilling to support this claim has not been completed, however, and all tests
are carefully monitored by the Egyptian authorities until their potential
contribution to Egyptology has been established.
Ground-based Remote Sensing

Probing techniques are useful, but inevitably involve some disturbance
of the site. There are, however, a wide range of non-destructive techniques
ideal for the archaeologist seeking to learn more about a site before—
or increasingly often without—excavation. These are geophysical sensing
devices, which can be either active (i.e. they pass energy of various kinds
through the soil and measure the response in order to “read” what lies
below the surface); or passive (i.e. they measure such physical properties as
magnetism and gravity without the need to use energy to obtain a response).
electromagnetic methoDS. The ground-penetrating (or probing) radar

(GPR) method employs radio pulses. An emitter sends short pulses through
the soil, and the echoes not only reflect back any changes in the soil and
sediment conditions encountered, such as filled ditches, graves, walls, etc., but
also measure the depth at which the changes occur on the basis of the travel
time of the pulses. Three-dimensional maps of buried archaeological remains
can then be produced from data processing and image-generation programs.
In archaeological exploration and mapping, the radar antenna is generally
dragged along the ground with the aid of a low trolley at walking speed in
transects, sending out and receiving many pulses per second. The reflection
data are stored digitally, which enables sophisticated data processing

and analysis to be carried out, producing records that are
relatively easy to interpret. Powerful computers and software
programs make it possible to store and process very large three-
dimensional sets of GPR data, and computer advances now
permit automated data and image processing that can help
to interpret complicated reflection profiles.
One such advance is the use of time-slices or slice-maps.
Thousands of individual reflections are combined into a single
three-dimensional dataset that can then be “sliced” horizontally,
each slice corresponding to a specific estimated depth in the
ground, and revealing the general shape and location of buried
features at successive depths. A variety of colors (or shades of
gray) are used to make a visual image that the brain can interpret
more easily—e.g. areas with little or no subsurface reflection may
be colored blue, those with high reflection may be red. Each slice
therefore becomes like a horizontal surface, and can illustrate
the buried components of the site.
For example, at Forum Novum, an ancient Roman marketplace
about 100 km (60 miles) north of Rome, archaeologists from the
Amplitude slice-maps from the Forum University of Birmingham in England and the British School of Archaeology
Novum site, Italy. The top slice, at 0–10 ns
(nanosecond, equivalent to 0–50 cm) reveals
in Rome needed a fuller picture of an unexcavated area than they had been able
a Y-shaped anomaly, reflecting two gravel to obtain from aerial photographs and other techniques, such as resistivity
roads. As the slices go deeper, the Roman
walls begin to emerge very clearly, showing
(see below). GPR slices of the area revealed a whole series of walls, rooms,
a well-organized plan of rooms, doors, and doorways, and courtyards—in short, they produced an architectural layout
corridors. The deepest slice shows the
actual floor levels of the rooms and the
of the site that means that future excavation can be concentrated on a
objects preserved on them. representative sample of the structures, thus avoiding a costly and time-
consuming uncovering of the whole area.
earth reSiStance Survey. A commonly used method that has been

employed on archaeological sites for several decades, particularly in Europe,
is earth resistance survey. The technique derives from the principle that the
damper the soil the more easily it will conduct electricity, i.e. the less resistance
it will show to an electric current. A resistivity meter attached to electrodes
in the ground can thus measure varying degrees of subsurface resistance to
a current passed between the electrodes. Silted-up ditches or filled-in pits retain
more moisture than stone walls or roads, and will therefore display lower
resistivity than stone structures.
The technique works particularly well for ditches and pits in chalk and
gravel, and masonry in clay. It usually involves first placing two remote
probes, which remain stationary, in the ground. Two mobile probes, fixed to
a frame that also supports the meter, are then inserted into the earth for each
reading. A variation of the method is resistivity profiling, which involves the
88 3 • Where?
measurement of earth resistance at increasing depths by widening the probe
Key Concepts spacings and thus building up a vertical “pseudosection” across a site.
Assessing the Layout
of Sites and Features Magnetic Survey MethodS. These are particularly helpful in locating such
fired-clay structures as hearths and pottery kilns; iron objects; and pits and
Site Surface Survey: the study of the ditches. Such buried features all produce slight but measurable distortions
distribution of surviving features at in the Earth’s magnetic field. The reasons for this vary according to the type
a site (such as earthworks or traces of feature, but are based on the presence of minute amounts of iron. For
of structures), and the recording and
example, grains of iron oxide in clay, their magnetism randomly orientated
sometimes collection of artifacts
(often pottery or stone tools) from
if the clay is unbaked, will line up and become permanently fixed in the
the surface direction of the Earth’s magnetic field when heated to about 700°C (1292°F)
or more. The baked clay thus becomes a weak permanent magnet, creating
Subsurface Detection: the use of an anomaly in the surrounding magnetic field. Anomalies caused by pits and
probes and shovel-test pits (and
ditches, on the other hand, occur because the so-called magnetic susceptibility
sometimes miniature TV cameras
and endoscopes) to find and map
of their contents is greater than that of the surrounding subsoil.
subsurface features Magnetic instruments, such as fluxgate magnetometers (see box overleaf),
can produce informative site plans that help to delimit archaeological
Ground-based Remote potential. Today, multiple types of sensors—both electromagnetic and
Sensing: the use of non-
magnetic—are often integrated on moving platforms or mobile arrays, which
destructive techniques, such as
ground-penetrating radar and
allow for simultaneous measurements. Color and grayscale maps are produced
magnetometry, to find and map that, along with contour maps, are used to display earth resistance survey
subsurface features results. In the case of magnetic survey, the contour map has lines that join
all points of the same value of the magnetic field intensity—this can reveal
separate anomalies, such as tombs in a cemetery.
Metal detectorS. These electromagnetic devices are also helpful in

detecting buried remains. An alternating magnetic field is generated by passing
an electrical current through a transmitter coil. Buried metal objects distort
this field and are detected as a result of an electrical signal picked up by a
receiver coil. Metal detectors can be of great value to archaeologists, particularly
as they can provide general results and are able to locate modern metal
objects that may lie near the surface. They are also very widely used by non-
archaeologists, most of whom are responsible enthusiasts. Some, however,
vandalize sites mindlessly and often illegally dig holes without recording or
reporting the finds they make, which are therefore without context.
So far, we have discovered sites and mapped as many of their surface and
subsurface features as possible. But, despite the growing importance of survey,
the only way to check the reliability of surface data, confirm the accuracy of
the remote sensing techniques, and actually see what remains of these sites
is to excavate them. Furthermore, survey can tell us a little about a large area,
but only excavation can tell us a great deal about a relatively small area.

Measuring
Magnetism
Most terrestrial magnetometer surveys their associated roads, trackways,

are undertaken either with fluxgate or and cemeteries.
with alkali-metal vapor magnetometers. An alternative and sometimes
Fluxgate instruments usually more effective magnetometer is the
comprise two sensors fixed rigidly at alkali-metal vapor type, typically a
either end of a vertically held tube, and cesium magnetometer. Although more
measure only the vertical component expensive and quite difficult to operate,
of the local magnetic field strength. an advantage these magnetometers The Bartington Grad601-2 single-axis,
The magnetometer is carried along have over fluxgate types is that they vertical-component, high-stability fluxgate
gradiometer system.
a succession of traverses, usually are more sensitive and can therefore
0.5–1.0 m apart, tied in to an overall detect features that are only very weakly
pre-surveyed grid, until the entire magnetic, or more deeply buried than mounted on a non-magnetic wheeled
site is covered. The signal is logged usual. Such instruments have been cart. Surveys with such systems can
automatically and stored in the used for many years with great success cover up to about 5 ha (12 acres) each
instrument’s memory, to be downloaded in continental Europe and are finding day at a high resolution sampling
and processed later. To speed up the favor elsewhere. Unlike a fluxgate interval (0.5 m × 0.25 m). Arrays of
coverage of large areas, two or more gradiometer they measure the total fluxgate sensors are now also being
fluxgate instruments can be moved magnetic field (but can be operated as introduced, but many surveys are
across the site at once—either on a total-field gradiometer if configured conducted with a dual sensor system
a frame carried by the operator, or with two vertically mounted sensors). (as in the photograph above) with a
sometimes on a wheeled cart. In this It is also usual for two or more of these sample interval of c. 0.1 m × 0.25 m.
way, many hectares of ground can be sensors to be used at once—often Fluxgates are often favored for their
covered quite quickly, revealing such lower cost, versatility, and ability to
features as pits, ditches, hearths, kilns, detect a similar range of features
or entire settlement complexes and to cesium systems.
50
nT
120 120
110 110
100 100
90 90
80 80
70 70
60 60
50 50
The results of a fluxgate gradiometer
survey of a barrow complex at Wyke 40 40
Down on Cranborne Chase in Dorset,
England, plotted in colored relief to 30 30
aid interpretation.
20 20
90 3 • Where?
Excavation
Excavation retains its central role in fieldwork because it yields the most
reliable evidence for the two main kinds of information archaeologists are
interested in: (1) human activities at a particular period in the past; and (2)
changes in those activities from period to period. Very broadly we can say that
contemporary activities take place horizontally in space, whereas changes in
those activities occur vertically through time. It is this distinction between
horizontal slices of time and vertical sequences through time that forms the
basis of most excavation methodology.
In the horizontal dimension, archaeologists demonstrate that activities
occurred at the same time by proving through excavation that artifacts and
features are found in association in an undisturbed context. Of course, as
we saw in Chapter 2, there are many formation processes that may disturb
this primary context. One of the main purposes of the survey and remote
sensing procedures outlined in earlier sections is to select for excavation
sites, or areas within sites, that are reasonably undisturbed. On a single-
period site, such as an East African early human camp site, this is vital if
human behavior at the camp is to be reconstructed at all accurately. But
on a multi-period site, such as a long-lived European town or Near Eastern
village mound, finding large areas of undisturbed deposits will be almost
impossible. Here archaeologists have to try to reconstruct during and after
excavation just what disturbance there has been, and then decide how to
interpret it. Clearly, adequate records must be made as excavation progresses
if the task of interpretation is to be undertaken with any chance of success.
In the vertical dimension archaeologists analyze changes through time by
the study of stratigraphy.
Stratigraphy
As we saw in Chapter 1, one of the first steps in understanding the great
antiquity of humankind was the recognition by geologists of the process
of stratification—that layers or strata are laid down, one on top of the other,
according to processes that still continue. Archaeological strata (the layers of
cultural or natural debris visible in the side of any excavation) accumulate over
much shorter periods of time than geological ones, but nevertheless conform
to the same law of superposition. Put simply, this states that where one layer
overlies another, the lower was deposited first. Hence, an excavated vertical
profile showing a series of layers constitutes a sequence that has accumulated
through time.
Chapter 4 explores the significance of this for dating purposes. Here we
should note that the law of superposition refers only to the sequence of
deposition, not to the age of the material in the different strata. The contents
of lower layers are indeed usually older than those of upper layers, but the
Excavation 91
archaeologist must not simply assume this. Pits dug down from a higher layer
or burrowing animals (even earthworms) may introduce later materials into
lower levels. Moreover, occasionally strata can become inverted, as when they
are eroded all the way from the top of a bank to the bottom of a ditch.
Archaeologists have developed an ingenious and effective method of
checking that artifacts—so far mostly of stone or bone—discovered in a
particular deposit are contemporaneous and not intrusive. They have found
that in a surprising number of cases flakes of stone or bone can be fitted
back together again: reassembled in the shape of the original stone block or
The complexity of stratification varies with
pieces of bone from which they came. At the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age)
the type of site. This hypothetical section site of Hengistbury Head in southern England, for example, reanalysis of an
through an urban deposit indicates the
kind of complicated stratigraphy, in both
old excavation showed that two groups of flint flakes, found in two different
vertical and horizontal dimensions, that layers, could be refitted. This cast doubt on the stratigraphic separation of
the archaeologist can encounter. There
the two layers, and demolished the original excavator’s argument that the
may be few undisturbed stratified layers.
The chances of finding preserved organic flints had been made by two different groups of people. As well as clarifying
material increase as one approaches
questions of stratification, these refitting or conjoining exercises are
the water table, near which deposits
may be waterlogged. transforming archaeological studies of early technology (see Chapter 7).
modern disturbance
present ground
surface
natural soil
level
drain
intact stratification wall foundations
preserved organic material water table
92 3 • Where?
Stratigraphy, then, is the study and validating of stratification—the analysis
Key Concepts in the vertical, time dimension of a series of layers in the horizontal, space
Excavation dimension (although in practice few layers are precisely horizontal).
What are the best excavation methods for retrieving this information?
Excavation yields evidence of
contemporary activities (which are Methods of Excavation
found horizontally through space) Excavation is both costly and destructive, and therefore never to be
and changes through time (which
undertaken lightly. Wherever possible, non-destructive approaches (outlined
are found vertically in sequences)
earlier) should be used to meet research objectives in preference to excavation.
Stratigraphy is the study of But assuming excavation is to proceed, and the necessary funding and
archaeological layers found permission to dig have been obtained, what are the best methods to adopt?
during excavations. The law of This book is not an excavation or field manual, but although such things
superposition states that where
do exist, a few days or weeks spent on a well-run dig are worth far more than
one layer overlies another, the lower
was deposited first. This forms the
reading any book on the subject. Nevertheless, some brief guidance as to the
basis of the way archaeologists main methods is given here. In addition, we look at the excavation of one site,
investigate changes through time the Jamestown settlement in Virginia, in a little more detail (see box overleaf).
It goes without saying that all excavation methods need to be adapted
Excavation methods should be
to the research question in hand and the nature of the site. It is no good
adapted to the site and the particular
questions that need to be answered.
digging a deeply stratified urban site, with hundreds of complex structures,
The two main strategies are the thousands of intercutting pits, and tens of thousands of artifacts, as if it were
Wheeler box-grid and open-area the same as a shallow Paleolithic open site, where only one or two structures
excavation; a combination of both is and a few hundred artifacts may survive. On the Paleolithic site, for example,
often used. A sampling strategy of
it may be possible to uncover all the structures and record the exact position
some kind can be required to save
time and money
or provenience, vertically and horizontally, of each and every artifact. On the
urban site there is no chance of doing this, given time and funding constraints.
Instead, we have to adopt a sampling strategy, and only key artifacts, such
as coins (important for dating purposes: see Chapter 4), will have their
provenience recorded with three-dimensional precision, the remainder being
allocated simply to the layer and perhaps the grid-square in which they were
found (sites are usually divided up into grid-squares, just like maps are, in
order to aid in accurate recording; naturally, the size and number of the grid
squares will depend on the type, size, and likely depth of the site).
It should be noted, however, that we have already reintroduced the idea of
the vertical and horizontal dimensions. These are as crucial to the methods
of excavation as they are to the principles behind excavation. Broadly speaking
we can divide excavation techniques into:
1 those that emphasize the vertical dimension, by cutting into deep deposits
to reveal stratification; and
2 those that emphasize the horizontal dimension, by opening up large areas
of a particular layer to reveal the spatial relationships between artifacts and
features in that layer.
Excavation 93
Jamestown Rediscovery: MD
The Excavation Process WV

Jamestown
l
VA
NC
On May 13, 1607, a hundred has actually escaped erosion. Most of

Englishmen established a settlement the archaeological footprint of the fort
on Jamestown Island in Virginia. Soon and more than one million artifacts have
under attack from Native Americans, been recovered, at least half of these
they quickly built a wooden fort. dating to the first three struggling years
Periodic resupply of settlers and of settlement.
stores, investment by the sponsoring The Jamestown Rediscovery research Delicate field recovery of arms and armor in a
Virginia Company of London, and the design is straightforward: uncover, backfilled metalworking shop/bakery cellar after
discovery of a cash crop, tobacco, record, and interpret the remnants of full feature definition by open-area excavation.
kept the venture alive. Ultimately, the James Fort; determine the original
Jamestown proved to be the first and evolving fort plan; learn as much
permanent English colony in North as possible about the daily lives of the together delineate features: building
America. For centuries the site of the settlers and the Native Americans; and foundations, fireplaces, postholes,
fort was thought to have been eroded record prehistoric and post-James Fort cellars, wells, pits, ditches, and graves.
away by the adjacent James River, but occupations. From the outset, it was These defined contexts are assigned
archaeological excavations from 1994 clear that the best way to record and ascending “JR” numbers, which are
onward by the Jamestown Rediscovery recover all this required a hybridized then entered into a GIS site map.
project have proved that the “lost” site excavation process combining the The decision to excavate partially
traditional grid-based control system or fully (or leave unexcavated) features
with open-area excavation. A thorough or related components of features is
documentary search was also essential, dependent upon whether or not they
both to pinpoint areas to investigate, can be associated with other known
and to reassess the records continually James Fort/Jamestown period (1607–
in light of new and more complex 24) remains, such as wall lines. More
questions raised by the digging. recent features are usually mapped but
left unexcavated. Once it is decided that
The Ongoing Field Process a given feature is likely to be a remnant
Initially, a grid of 3-m (10-ft.) squares is of the fort occupation, excavation
employed in each area to be excavated, determines the cultural deposition
facilitating the recording of artifacts sequence, indicated by changes in the
deposited in post-fort layers. Once the soil color, texture, or inclusions of strata.
seventeenth-century level is exposed, Each layer is then sequentially assigned
the grid is replaced with a feature- a letter of the alphabet. In this manner,
based open-area recording method. the JR number and letter permanently
At this stage, both physical remains label each individual feature, and layers
and variations in soil color and texture within them, as distinct contexts. Most
contexts are then drawn, photographed,
systematically archived, and eventually
linked to the GIS site map.
The artifacts are recovered in
two stages: as the feature layers are
excavated and then as the loose spoil
The grid-based (foreground) and open-area is wet- or dry-screened (the latter either
(background) excavations at James Fort. by hand or mechanically). The specific
94 3 • Where?
GIS site map of the James Fort open-area
excavations, 1994–2010.
screening process employed depends

on the age and integrity of the context.
The resulting artifact collections are
washed, conserved, and cataloged in a
laboratory on site, permanently carrying
their JR number and letter.
Soil samples of individual layers
N
are collected and archived for future
flotation and/or chemical analysis. Once
selected features in an area have been 0 30 m
0 100 ft.
excavated and/or recorded, that area
Grid areas excavated between 1994 and 2011
is covered with a geotextile fabric and
backfilled, usually with 50 cm (20 in.) * Features shown in red are circa James Fort period
of soil. As of 2011, about 15 percent of

features in the fort have been partially
or fully excavated, with the remainder are applied to metallic objects and catalog is linked to the GIS site map so
preserved for future investigation. organic materials. that plans, photos, and artifacts can be
The computer cataloging program interpreted at a single computer station.
Collections Management is straightforward and searchable, Descriptive reports are generated
After initial cleaning, artifacts are utilizing minimal attribute fields for each year of the excavation, but
sorted according to conservation (number, material, form, and design), interpretation is limited because of
requirements, balancing the need for but with the ability to enter other useful the ongoing nature of the project.
rescue and long-term preservation data in a separate field. To facilitate
with interpretive potential. A number analysis and publication, the digital
of techniques, including X-ray recording Reconstruction of
and mechanical/chemical treatments, James Fort based on
excavated evidence
and historical records.
Jamestown Rediscovery: The Excavation Process 95

Most excavators employ a combination of both strategies, but there are
different ways of achieving this. All presuppose that the site has first been
surveyed and a grid of squares laid down over it. A site grid is laid out from
a datum, which is simply a selected location that serves as a reference point
for all horizontal and vertical measurements taken, so that the site can be
accurately mapped and the exact location of any artifact or feature can be
recorded in three dimensions if that is necessary or feasible.
The Wheeler box-grid—developed from the work of Pitt-Rivers, as noted
in Chapter 1—seeks to satisfy both vertical and horizontal requirements by
retaining intact balks of earth between the squares of the grid, as can be
clearly seen in the picture to the right, so that different layers can be traced
and correlated across the site in vertical profiles. Once the general extent and
layout of the site have been ascertained, some of the balks can be removed
and the squares joined into an open excavation to expose any features
(such as a mosaic floor) that are of special interest.
Advocates of open-area excavation criticize this method, arguing that the
balks are invariably in the wrong place or wrongly orientated to illustrate
the relationships required from sections, and that they prevent the
distinguishing of spatial patterning over large areas. It is far better, these
critics say, not to have such permanent or semi-permanent balks, but to open
up large areas and only to cut vertical sections (at whatever angle is necessary
to the main site grid) where they are needed to elucidate particularly complex
stratigraphic relationships. Apart from these “running sections,” the vertical
dimension is recorded by accurate three-dimensional measurements as the
dig proceeds and reconstructed on paper after the end of the excavation.
The introduction since Wheeler’s day of more advanced recording methods,
including field computers, makes this more demanding open-area method
feasible, and it has become the norm, for instance, in much of British
archaeology. The open-area method is particularly effective where single-
period deposits lie near the surface, as for instance with remains of Native
American or European Neolithic long houses. Here the time dimension may
be represented by lateral movement (a settlement rebuilt adjacent to, not
on top of, an earlier one) and it is essential to expose large horizontal areas
in order to understand the complex pattern of rebuilding. Large open-area
excavations are often undertaken in applied archaeology when land is going
to be destroyed—otherwise farmers are naturally opposed to stripping large
areas of plow-disturbed soil. The box-grid method is still widely used in parts
of South Asia, where it was introduced by Wheeler in the 1940s. It remains
popular as it enables large numbers of untrained workers in individual boxes
to be easily supervised by small numbers of staff.
No single method, however, is ever going to be universally applicable.
The rigid box-grid, for instance, has rarely been employed to excavate very
96 3 • Where?
(Above left) Box-grid excavation trenches deep sites, such as Near Eastern tells, because the trench squares rapidly
at Anuradhapura’s Abhayagiri Buddhist
monastery, Sri Lanka.
become uncomfortable and dangerous as the dig proceeds downward. One
solution commonly adopted is step-trenching, with a large area opened at
(Above right) The Native American site
of Koster, in the Illinois River Valley: large
the top that gradually narrows as the dig descends in a series of large steps.
horizontal areas were uncovered to locate This technique was used effectively at the Koster site, Illinois.
living floors and activity zones. However,
in order for the vertical dimension to be
Each site is different and one needs to adapt to its conditions—for
analyzed at this deep site, vertical sections example, in some cases by following the natural geological strata or the
were cut as steps as the excavation
descended. At this complex site fourteen
cultural layers instead of using arbitrary spits or imposing a false regularity
occupation levels were identified, dating where it does not exist. Whatever the method of excavation, a dig is only
from c. 7500 bce to 1200 ce.
as good as its methods of recovery and recording. Since excavation involves
destruction of much of the evidence, it is an unrepeatable exercise. Well-
thought-out recovery methods are essential, and careful records must be
kept of every stage of the dig.
Excavating in the Digital Age

The development of new digital technologies has revolutionized
archaeological survey in recent years, and the same is true of excavation and
site recording. Image-based 3D modeling is proving of special importance.
A 3D computer-generated model of a site is created before work starts,
and then every stage of the excavation is documented in the same way
as with paper recording. Anyone can visit the virtual dig, as if they were
standing on the site itself as the work took place. They can thus examine
the evidence as it appears, and pool their expertise to interpret it. In contrast
to 3D laser scanning, which requires expensive and specialized equipment
Excavation 97
Excavating an Masonry wall
Urban Site UNITED

KINGDOM
•
Structural timbers
Clay wall
London
Mosaic pavements
Archaeological sites in continuously A phase plan of part of the site, illustrating

occupied towns and cities present two Roman masonry walls, timbers and floor
surfaces, generated from digitized records.
special challenges. The first is how
The numbers indicate ground levels in meters.
to identify, record, and interpret the
features left by centuries of building and
rebuilding, which may result in meters The Bloomberg Excavation
of complex archaeology. The second The 3-acre site lies over a buried river, N
concerns the economic pressures of known today as the Walbrook. In the
modern development. In the case of 1950s limited excavations revealed
the modern City of London, which lies remains of a third-century Roman
on top of Roman Londinium, these temple. In 2010 the global financial
are particularly acute. Archaeological information company Bloomberg
work has to be planned rigorously decided to redevelop the site for its
and integrated with demolition and European headquarters. A Museum
0 5m
construction programs to avoid of London Archaeology (MOLA) project
0 15 ft.
expensive delays. manager was integrated into the
Bloomberg design team.
Planning and Strategy allocated a context number, planned

Desk-based research and site work by on an individual sheet, and recorded
MOLA showed that up to 7 m (23 ft.) on a context sheet. Every find or
of waterlogged deposits might have environmental sample is attributed to
survived in certain areas. An area of its context, linking each aspect of the
650 sq. m (2130 sq. ft.) needed to be project to its origin on the site, allowing
excavated. Some of the key research the archaeology to be reconstructed
objectives were to understand local after the excavation. Use of the Harris
landscape formation processes and matrix (a diagram representing the
how these influenced the siting of the stratigraphic relationship of the
earliest settlement, the management contexts) is vital.
and use of the Walbrook, and the
landscape contemporary with the Post-excavation Analysis and
Roman temple. Public Engagement
The excavation produced a huge
Field Techniques archaeological assemblage: 3 tons of
Urban sites, with their hundreds of Roman pottery, nearly 400 fragments
interrelated and intercutting deposits, of wooden writing tablets, and the
require the use of a single-context best assemblage of Roman textiles
recording system, where evidence from Roman Britain. In addition to
of each archaeological “event” is publishing the excavations, the project
also employed a public engagement
A team of fifty archaeologists from MOLA strategy, including the Walbrook
excavated the Bloomberg London site for
over six months. It is the most extensive
Discovery Program blog, professionally
excavation to take place in the City of video-recording the excavation and
London for twenty years. interviews with site staff.
98 3 • Where?
to produce high-quality results, the new method needs nothing more
than a simple camera and some software—in other words, it is cheap and
accessible to all.
For example, if archaeologists are digging a burial, they no longer need
to draw the skeleton and grave in plan view (an acquired skill); instead they
merely take a series of digital photos (fifteen to eighty) from as many angles as
possible, at every stage of the excavation as the burial is uncovered. A software
program called PhotoScan can then generate the 3D contours of the burial
from the photos, as well as digitized plans of the skeleton.
The method need not only be applied to small-scale digs or individual
features. It is now being extended to entire excavations—for example at the
Boudelo-2 site in Belgium, a twelfth- to thirteenth-century Cistercian abbey on
reclaimed medieval wetland. During an excavation campaign in 2012, a 60-m-
(195-ft.-) long soil profile and all unearthed brick structures were recorded
both by image-based 3D modeling and by traditional manual techniques, plus
oblique photography. The work then proceeded to a complete 3D recording of
the excavation—everything that would normally have been recorded on paper
was logged digitally. Manual recording was thus relegated to a backup system.
Labels, notes, descriptions, and interpretations are still necessary in the
course of any excavation, and these more subjective aspects cannot be added
The recording of a single brick structure immediately to the recording; hence they need to be stored elsewhere and
from Boudelo-2 in Belgium: the excavation
process is visualized in a series of
linked to the excavation record later. Such data are therefore first logged in
orthophotos and corresponding digital database form on tablet PCs. These are now sufficiently robust and cheap for
surface models (below left), and vertical
ortho-images show the structure in profile
use in the field, and have already proved invaluable at many sites—for example
from all four sides (below right). at Pompeii, where Apple iPads replaced field notebooks some years ago.
North
profile
South
profile
East
N
profile
0 50 cm
0 20 in.
West 0 30 cm
profile 0 12 in.
Excavation 99
In short, new technology is encouraging
a significant improvement in the quality of
recording in comparison with traditional
methods, especially as the latter are often subject
to error. The accurate documentation of 3D shape
and texture is of great importance in archaeology:
the combination of accurate metrics, 3D shape
and detailed texture produces a far more objective
and reliable record of an excavation.
Computer technology is advancing so rapidly
that new software developments, together with
decreasing costs and increasing computing
power, will undoubtedly further streamline and
improve many aspects of excavation in the next
few decades. Digital data capture, however, is
Reconstruction of the Arch of Triumph not a panacea for all situations; computers may introduce their own bias to
from Palmyra, Syria, on display in Trafalgar
Square, London, in 2016. The original arch,
matters of observation and interpretation, introducing their own issues of
built by the Romans some 1800 years ago, subjectivity. Archaeologists need always to carefully consider what a digital
was destroyed by militants of the so-called
Islamic State (IS) in 2015. Using 3D and 2D
output is actually telling them.
photographs taken before the destruction, 3D printing is also increasing the possibilities of collaboration in an
the replica was modeled and effectively
“printed” in real stone (albeit at two-thirds
archaeological project. Excavated objects can now be scanned and the data
scale) using a computer-controlled milling sent to other locations to be replicated by 3D printing. These replicas can be
machine. The arch has also been displayed
in New York and other cities.
examined off-site by specialists, or used for teaching purposes, and can extend
the visibility of artifacts and architecture across the world.
Underwater Archaeology
One special category of both survey and excavation is constituted by
underwater archaeology, which is generally considered to have been given
its first major impetus during the winter of 1853–54, when a particularly low
water level in the Swiss lakes laid bare enormous quantities of wooden posts,
pottery, and other artifacts. From the earliest investigations, using crude
diving-bells, it has developed into a valuable complement to work on land.
It encompasses a wide variety of sites, including wells, sink holes, and springs
(e.g. the great sacrificial well at Chichen Itza, Mexico); submerged lakeside
settlements; and marine sites ranging from shipwrecks to sunken harbors
and drowned cities.
The invention in recent times of miniature submarines, other submersible
craft, and above all of scuba diving gear has been of enormous value, enabling
divers to stay underwater for much longer, and to reach sites at previously
impossible depths. As a result, the pace and scale of discovery have greatly
increased. More than 1000 shipwrecks are known in shallow Mediterranean
waters, but recent explorations using deep-sea submersibles, such as
100 3 • Where?
miniature unmanned submarines (remotely operated vehicles—ROVs) with
sonar, high-powered lighting, and video cameras, have begun to find Roman
wrecks at depths of up to 850 m (2790 ft.). And two Phoenician wrecks packed
3
with amphorae (storage jars) discovered off the coast of Israel are the oldest
vessels ever found in the deep sea.
2 unDerwater Survey. Geophysical methods are as useful in underwater

survey as they are for locating land sites. For example, in 1979 it was
magnetometry combined with side-scan sonar that discovered the Hamilton
and the Scourge, two armed schooners sunk during the War of 1812 at a depth
1 of 90 m (295 ft.) in Lake Ontario, Canada. The latest multibeam side-scan
sonar gives brilliantly clear images and allows accurate measurements to
be taken of shipwrecks on the seabed. Nevertheless, in such regions as the
(Above) Three methods of geophysical Mediterranean the majority of finds have resulted from methods as simple
underwater survey. (1) The proton
magnetometer is towed well behind the
as talking to local sponge-divers, who collectively have spent thousands of
survey boat, detecting iron and steel objects hours scouring the seabed.
(e.g. cannons, steel hulls) that distort the
Earth’s magnetic field. (2) Side-scan sonar
transmits sound waves in a fan-shaped unDerwater excavation. Excavation underwater is complex and
beam to produce a graphic image of surface
(but not subsurface) features on the seafloor.
expensive (not to mention the highly demanding post-excavation
(3) The sub-bottom profiler emits sound conservation and analytical work that is also required). Once under way,
pulses that bounce back from features and
objects buried beneath the seafloor.
the excavation may involve shifting vast quantities of sediment, and
recording and removing bulky objects as diverse as amphorae, metal ingots,
and cannons. George Bass, founder of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology
in Texas, and others have developed many helpful devices, such as baskets
(Below) Underwater excavation techniques: attached to balloons to raise objects, and air lifts (suction hoses) to remove
left, the lift bag for raising objects; center,
measuring and recording finds in situ; right,
sediment. If the vessel’s hull survives at all, a 3D plan must be made so that
the air lift for removing sediment. specialists can later reconstruct the overall form and lines, either on paper
or in three dimensions as a model or full-size replica. In some rare cases,
for example that of England’s Mary Rose (a sixteenth-century ce warship that
sank off Portsmouth), preservation is sufficiently good for the remains of
the hull to be raised—funds permitting.
Nautical archaeologists have now excavated more than 100 sunken vessels,
revealing not only how they were constructed but also many insights into
shipboard life, cargoes, trade routes, early metallurgy, and glassmaking.
For example, a Basque whaling ship, the San Juan, which had sunk in Red
Bay, Labrador, in 1565, was excavated in the 1980s from a specially equipped
barge, anchored above the site, that contained a workshop, storage baths for
artifacts, a crane for lifting timbers, and a compressor able to run 12 air lifts
for removing silt. Salt water was heated on board and pumped down through
hoses direct to the divers’ suits to maintain body warmth in the near-freezing
conditions. An important technique devised during the project was the
use of latex rubber to mold large sections of the ship’s timbers in position
Excavation 101
Red Bay
l
CANADA
UNITED STATES
(Above left) Model, at a scale of 1:10, underwater, thereby reproducing accurately the hull shape and such details
to show how the San Juan’s surviving
timbers may have fitted together.
as toolmarks and wood grain. The remains of the vessel were also raised in
pieces to the surface for precise recording, but the latex molds eliminated
(Above right) Structural plan of the wreck
on the harbor bottom (2-m grid squares).
the need for costly conservation of the original timbers, which were
reburied on-site.
Recovery and Recording of the Evidence

As we saw above, different sites have different requirements. We should aim
to recover and plot the three-dimensional provenience of every artifact from a
shallow single-period Paleolithic or Neolithic site, an objective that is simply
not feasible for the urban archaeologist. On both types of site, a decision may
be made to save time by using mechanical diggers to remove topsoil, but
thereafter the Paleolithic or Neolithic specialist will usually want to screen
or sieve as much excavated soil as possible in order to recover tiny artifacts,
animal bones, and plant remains. The urban archaeologist on the other hand
will only be able to adopt sieving much more selectively, as part of a sampling
strategy, for instance where plant remains can be expected to survive, as in
a latrine or garbage pit. Decisions need to be made about the type of sieving
to be undertaken, the size of the screen and its mesh, and whether dry or wet
sieving will yield the best results. Naturally all these factors will depend on the
resources of the excavation project, the period and scale of the site, whether
it is dry or waterlogged, and what kind of material can be expected to have
survived and to be retrievable.
Once an artifact has been recovered, and its provenience recorded, it must
be given a number that is entered in a catalog book or field computer and on
the bag in which it is to be stored. Day-to-day progress of the dig is recorded
in site notebooks, or on data sheets preprinted with specific questions to
102 3 • Where?
be answered (which helps produce uniform data suitable for later analysis
by computer).
Unlike artifacts, which can be removed for later analysis, features and
structures usually have to be left where they were found (or in situ), or
destroyed as the excavation proceeds to another layer. It is thus imperative
to record them, not simply by written description in site notebooks, but by
accurately scaled drawings and photography. The same applies to vertical
profiles (sections), and for each horizontally exposed layer, good overhead
photographs taken from a stand or tethered balloon are also essential.
It is the site notebooks, scaled drawings, photographs and digital media—
in addition to recovered artifacts, animal bones, and plant remains—that form
the total record of the excavation, on the basis of which all interpretations of
the site will be made. This post-excavation analysis will take many months,
perhaps years, often much longer than the excavation itself. Some preliminary
analysis, however, particularly sorting and classification of the artifacts, will be
made in the field during the course of the excavation.
Processing and Classification

Like excavation itself, the processing of excavated materials in the field
laboratory is a specialized activity that demands careful planning and
organization. For example, an archaeologist excavating a wet site will need
experts in the conservation of waterlogged wood, and facilities for coping with
such material.
Two important aspects of field laboratory procedure are cleaning artifacts,
and sorting and classifying them. In both cases the archaeologist always
needs to consider in advance what kinds of questions the newly excavated
material might be able to answer. Thorough cleaning of artifacts, for
example, is a traditional part of excavations worldwide. But many of the
new scientific techniques discussed later in this book make it quite evident
that artifacts should not necessarily be cleaned thoroughly before a specialist
has had a chance to study them. For instance, we now know that food
residues are often preserved in pots, and possible blood residues on stone
tools. The chances of such preservation need to be assessed before evidence
is destroyed.
Nevertheless most artifacts eventually have to be cleaned to some degree
if they are to be sorted and classified. Initial sorting is into such broad
categories as stone tools, pottery, and metal objects. These categories are then
subdivided or classified, so as to create more manageable groups that can
later be analyzed. Classification is commonly done on the basis of three kinds
of characteristics or attributes: surface attributes (including decoration and
color); shape attributes (dimensions as well as shape itself); and technological
attributes (primarily raw material). Artifacts with similar attributes are
Excavation 103
grouped together into artifact types—hence the term typology, which simply
refers to the creation of such types.
Typology dominated archaeological thinking until the 1950s, and still plays
an important role. The reason for this is straightforward. Artifacts make up
a large part of the archaeological record, and typology helps archaeologists
create order in this mass of evidence. As we saw in Chapter 1, C.J. Thomsen
demonstrated early on that artifacts could be ordered in a Three Age System or
sequence of stone, bronze, and iron. This discovery underlies the continuing
use of typology as a method of dating (see Chapter 4). Typology has also
been used as a means of defining archaeological entities at a particular
moment in time: groups of artifact (and building) types at a particular time
and place are termed assemblages, and groups of assemblages have been taken
to define archaeological cultures. These definitions are also long established,
but, as we shall see later, the difficulty comes when one tries to translate this
Terms used in archaeological classification,

from attributes (shape, decoration) of a pot
to the complete archaeological culture:
a diagram developed by the American Attribute
patterning
archaeologist James Deetz. The columns reflects
at left and right give the inferred human individual
meaning of the terms. behavior
patterns
INDIVIDUALS ATTRIBUTES ARTIFACTS
Artifact
patterning
reflects
group
behavior
patterns
GROUPS ARTIFACTS SUBASSEMBLAGES
Subassemblage
patterning
reflects
community
behavior
patterns
COMMUNITIES SUBASSEMBLAGES ASSEMBLAGES
Assemblage
patterning
reflects
societal
behavior
patterns
SOCIETIES ASSEMBLAGES ARCHAEOLOGICAL CULTURES
104 3 • Where?
terminology into human terms and to relate an archaeological “culture”
with an actual group of people in the past.
This brings us back to the purpose of classification. Types, assemblages,
and cultures are all concepts designed to put order into disordered evidence—
they are artificial. The trap that former generations of scholars fell into was
to allow these concepts to determine the way they thought about the past,
rather than using them merely as one means of giving shape to the evidence.
We now recognize more clearly that different classifications are needed for the
different kinds of questions we want to ask. A student of ceramic technology
would base a classification on variations in raw material and methods of
manufacture, whereas a scholar studying the various functions of pottery for
storage, cooking, and so forth might classify the vessels according to shape
and size. Our ability to construct and make good use of new classifications has
been immeasurably enhanced by computers, which allow archaeologists to
compare the association of different attributes of thousands of objects at once.
Post-excavation work in the laboratory or store does not cease with
cleaning, labeling, and classification. Curation is also of immense importance,
and the conservation of objects and materials plays a major role, not only for
the arrangement of long-term storage but also for collections management
in general. The material needs to be preserved and readily available for future
research, reinterpretation and, in some cases, display to the public, whether
permanently or in temporary exhibitions.
In conclusion, it cannot be stressed too strongly that all the effort put into
survey, excavation, and post-excavation analysis will have been largely wasted
unless the results are published.
Study Questions
1 What are the pros and cons of the unsystematic and systematic
survey methods?
2 What types of archaeological sites can be identified through
aerial photography?
3 What is a GIS and how can archaeologists use it?
4 How is archaeological excavation different from archaeological survey?
5 What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Wheeler box-grid method
of excavation?
6 What are some of the ways in which artifacts can be classified?
Excavation 105
Summary
the archaeologiSt has a barrage of ground and aerial survey techniques
available with which to find new sites.
inDiviDual SiteS have traditionally been the main focus of archaeological attention,
but today archaeologists study whole regions, often employing sampling techniques.
Having located sites within those regions, and mapped them (usually using GIS),
archaeologists can then turn to remote sensing site survey devices able to detect
buried features without excavation.
remote SenSing methoDS almost all involve measuring either energy that has
been passed into the ground or the intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field. In both
cases, they depend on contrast between the buried features and their surroundings.
The various techniques allow archaeologists to be more selective in deciding which
parts of a site, if any, should be fully excavated.
excavation elucidates the horizontal extent of a site in space, as well as its vertical
stratification, representing changes through time. Good recording methods are
essential, together with a well-equipped field laboratory for processing and classifying
finds. Classification based on selected attributes (decoration, shape, material) of
each artifact is the fundamental means of organizing excavated material, usually into
types—hence typology. But classification is only a means to an end, and different
schemes are needed for the different questions archaeologists want to address.
material retrieveD during survey and excavation will only be of use if it can be
dated in some way. In the next chapter we turn to this crucial aspect of archaeology.
Further Reading
Useful introductions to methods of Hester, T. N., Shafer, H. J., & Feder, K. L.
survey and excavation can be found in: 2008. Field Methods in Archaeology
(7th ed.). Left Coast Press: Walnut
Collis, J. 2004. Digging up the Past: Creek, CA.
An Introduction to Archaeological Oswin, J. 2009. A Field Guide to
Excavation. Sutton: Stroud. Geophysics in Archaeology.
Conyers, L. B. 2012. Interpreting Ground- Springer: Berlin.
Penetrating Radar for Archaeology. Wheatley, D. & Gillings, M. 2002. Spatial
Left Coast Press: Walnut Creek, CA. Technology and Archaeology: The
English Heritage 2008. Geophysical Archaeological Applications of GIS.
Survey in Archaeological Field Routledge: London.
Evaluation (2nd ed.). English Wiseman, J. R. & El-Baz, F. (eds). 2007.
Heritage: London. Remote Sensing in Archaeology.
Gaffney, V. & Gater, J. 2003. Revealing Springer: Berlin.
the Buried Past: Geophysics for
Archaeologists. Tempus: Stroud. [See p. 345 for a list of useful websites]
106 3 • Where?
4 When?
Dating Methods and Chronology
RELATIVE DATING 110 Other Absolute Dating

Methods 132
Stratigraphy: Ordering
Archaeological Layers 110 World Chronology 134
Typological Sequences:
Comparing Objects 112 Study Questions 140
Seriation: Comparing Assemblages Summary 141
of Objects 113 Further Reading 141
Environmental Sequences 114
ABSOLUTE DATING 116
Calendars and Historical

Chronologies 116
Using a Historical Chronology 118
Annual Cycles 119

Tree-ring Dating 120
Radioactive Clocks 122

Radiocarbon Dating 123
❑ The Principles of Radioactive Decay 124
❑ How to Calibrate Radiocarbon Dates 127
Other Radiometric Methods 129

❑ Dating Early Europeans at Atapuerca,
Spain 131
All human beings experience time. An individual experiences a lifetime
of perhaps seventy years or so. That person, through the memories of his or
her parents and grandparents, may also indirectly experience earlier periods
of time, back over more than 100 years. The study of history gives us access to
hundreds more years of recorded time. But it is only archaeology that opens up
the almost unimaginable vistas of thousands and even a few millions of years
of past human existence. This chapter will examine the various ways in which
we, as archaeologists, date past events within this great expanse of time.
Relative and absolute dating. It might seem surprising that in order

to study the past it is not always essential to know precisely how long ago
(in years) a particular period or event occurred. It is often very helpful simply
to know whether one event happened before or after another. By ordering
artifacts, deposits, societies, and events into sequences, earlier before later,
we can study developments in the past without knowing how long each stage
lasted or how many years ago the changes took place. This idea that something
is older (or younger) relative to something else is the basis of relative dating.
Ultimately, however, we want to know the full or absolute age in years
before the present of different events or parts of a sequence—we need
methods of absolute dating. Absolute dates help us find out how quickly
such changes as the introduction of agriculture occurred, and whether they
occurred simultaneously or at different times in different regions of the world.
Only in the last sixty-five years or so have independent means of absolute
dating become available, transforming archaeology in the process. Before
then, virtually the only reliable absolute dates were historical ones, such
as the date of the reign of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun.
MeasuRing tiMe. How do we detect the passage of time? We can all observe
its passing through the alternating darkness and light of nights and days,
and then through the annual cycle of the seasons. In fact, for most of human
108 4 • When?
history these were the only ways of measuring time, other than by the human
lifespan. As we shall see, some dating methods still rely on the annual passage
of the seasons. Increasingly, however, dating methods in archaeology have
come to rely on other physical processes, many of them not observable to the
human eye. The most significant of these is the use of radioactive clocks.
Some degree of error, usually expressed as an age bracket that can
stretch over several centuries or even millennia, is inevitable when using
any dating technique. But while the science behind dating methods is being
ever more refined, the main source of errors remains the archaeologist—
by poor choice of samples to be dated, by contaminating those samples,
or by misinterpreting results.
dating Conventions. To be meaningful, our timescale in years must relate

to a fixed point in time. In the Christian world, this is by convention taken as
the birth of Christ, supposedly in the year ad 1 (there is no year 0), with years
counted back before Christ (bc) and forward after Christ (ad or Anno Domini,
which is Latin for “In the Year of Our Lord”). However, this is by no means the
only system. In the Muslim world, for example, the basic fixed point is the
date of the Prophet’s departure from Mecca (ad 622 in the Christian calendar).
As a result of these differences some scholars prefer to use the terms “Before
the Common Era” (bce) and “in the Common Era” (ce) instead of bc and ad,
and that is the convention we follow in this book.
Scientists who derive dates from radioactive methods want a neutral
international system, and have chosen to count years back from the present
(bp). But since scientists too require a firm fixed point to count from, they take
bp to mean “before 1950” (the approximate year of the establishment of the
first radioactive method, radiocarbon). This may be convenient for scientists,
but can be confusing for everyone else (a date of 400 bp is not 400 years ago
but 1550 ce, currently more than 465 years ago). It is therefore clearest to
convert any bp date for the last few thousand years into the bce/ce system.
For the Paleolithic period, however (stretching back two or three million
years before 10,000 bce), archaeologists use the terms “bp” and “years ago”
interchangeably, since a difference of fifty years or so between them is
irrelevant. For this remote epoch we are dating sites or events at best only
to within several thousand years of their true date. If even the most precise
dates for the Paleolithic give us glimpses of that epoch only at intervals of
several thousand years, clearly archaeologists can never hope to reconstruct
a conventional history of Paleolithic events. On the other hand, Paleolithic
archaeologists can gain insights into some of the broad long-term changes
that shaped the way modern humans evolved—insights that are denied
archaeologists working with shorter periods of time, where in any case there
may be too much detail for the broader pattern to be apparent.
4 • When? 109
The way in which archaeologists carry out their research therefore depends
very much on the precision of dating obtainable for the period of time in
question. In what follows we deal first with relative dating, whereby principles
of sequence—what comes before, what comes after—are established. That is
what stratigraphy is all about. Then we deal with absolute dating, establishing
dates in years. There radiocarbon dating and its calibration are crucial. Other
methods of absolute dating are then briefly discussed.
RELATIVE DATING
The first, and in some ways the most important, step in much archaeological
research involves ordering things into sequences. The things to be put into
sequence can be archaeological deposits in a stratigraphic excavation, or they
can be artifacts, as in a typological sequence. Changes in the Earth’s climate
also give rise to local, regional, and global environmental sequences—the
most notable being the sequence of global fluctuations during the Ice Age.
All these sequences can be used for relative dating.
Stratigraphy: Ordering Archaeological Layers

Stratigraphy, as we saw in Chapter 3, is the study of stratification—the laying
down or depositing of strata or layers (also called deposits) one above the
other. From the point of view of relative dating, the important principle
is that the underlying layer was deposited first and therefore earlier than
the overlying layer. A succession of layers provides a relative chronological
Key Concepts
sequence, from earliest (bottom) to latest (top).
Relative Dating Methods
Good stratigraphic excavation at an archaeological site is designed to
Stratigraphy: in a succession of obtain such a sequence. Part of this work involves detecting whether there has
layers the bottom layer is the earliest been any human or natural disturbance of the layers since they were originally
and the top layer the latest deposited (such as garbage pits dug down by later occupants of a site into
earlier layers, or animals burrowing holes). Armed with carefully observed
Association: objects found in the
stratigraphic information, the archaeologist can hope to construct a reliable
same stratigraphic layer were buried
at the same time relative chronological sequence for the deposition of the different layers.
But of course what we mostly want to date are not so much the layers
Typological Sequences: artifacts or deposits themselves as the materials that humans have left within them—
with similar characteristics were artifacts, structures, organic remains—that ultimately reveal past human
produced at the same time—
activities at the site. Here the idea of association is important. When we say
“like goes with like”
that two objects were found in association within the same archaeological
Seriation: assemblages of objects deposit, we generally mean that they became buried at the same time.
can be arranged in serial order to Provided that the deposit is a sealed one, without stratigraphic intrusions
create a relative chronology from another deposit, the associated objects can be said to be no more
recent than the deposit itself. A sequence of sealed deposits thus gives a
110 4 • When?
Stratigraphy in action: a section across a sequence—and relative chronology—for the time of burial of the objects found
mound or tell in the Indus Valley. Attention
to stratigraphy is crucial because, as with
associated in those deposits.
the coins and the seal here, not everything This is a crucial concept to grasp, because if one of those objects can later
found at the same level is always equally old.
be given an absolute date—say a datable coin or a piece of charcoal that can
be dated by radiocarbon in the laboratory—then it is possible to assign that
absolute date not only to the charcoal but to the sealed deposit and the
other objects associated with it as well. A series of such dates from different
deposits will give an absolute chronology for the whole sequence. It is this
interconnecting of stratigraphic sequences with absolute dating methods
that provides the most reliable basis for dating archaeological sites and their
contents. The example shown above is Sir Mortimer Wheeler’s drawing of
a section across an ancient mound in the Indus Valley (modern Pakistan).
The site has been disturbed by more recent pits, but the sequence of layers is
still visible, and the Harappan seal, of known age and found in an undisturbed
context in layer 8, helps to date that layer and the wall next to it.
But there is another important point to consider. So far we have dated,
relatively and, with luck, absolutely, the time of burial of the deposits and
their associated material. As we have observed, however, what we want
ultimately to reconstruct and date are the past human activities and behavior
that those deposits and materials represent. If a deposit is a garbage pit with
pottery in it, the deposit itself is of interest as an example of human activity,
and the date for it is the date of human use of the pit. This will also be the
date of final burial of the pottery—but it will not be the date of human use of
that pottery, which could have been in circulation tens or hundreds of years
Stratigraphy: Ordering Archaeological Layers 111

earlier, before being discarded with other garbage in the pit. It is necessary
therefore always to be clear about which activity we are trying to date, or can
reliably date in the circumstances.
Typological Sequences: Comparing Objects

When we look at the artifacts, buildings, or any of the human creations
around us, most of us can mentally arrange them into a rough chronological
1 sequence. One kind of aircraft looks older than another, one set of clothes
looks more old-fashioned than the next. How do archaeologists exploit this
ability for relative dating?
Archaeologists define the form of such an artifact as a pot by its specific
2 attributes of material, shape, and decoration. Several pots with the same
attributes constitute a pot type, and typology groups artifacts into such types.
Underlying the notion of relative dating through typology are two other ideas.
The first is that the products of a given period and place have a recognizable
style: through their distinctive shape and decoration they are in some
3
sense characteristic of the society that produced them. The archaeologist or
anthropologist can often recognize and classify individual artifacts by their
style, and hence assign them to a particular place in a typological sequence.
The second idea is that the change in style (shape and decoration) of
4 artifacts is often quite gradual, or evolutionary. This idea came from the
Darwinian theory of the evolution of species, and was used by nineteenth-
century archaeologists who applied a very convenient rule, that “like goes
with like.” In other words, particular artifacts (e.g. bronze daggers) produced
at about the same time are often alike, but those produced several centuries
5
apart will be different as a result of centuries of change. It follows, then, that
when studying a series of daggers of unknown date, it is logical first to arrange
Gradual changes in design are them in a sequence in such a way that the most closely similar are located
evident in the history of the automobile
and of the prehistoric European axe—
beside each other. This is then likely to be the true chronological sequence,
(1) stone; (2–5) bronze. because it best reflects the principle that “like goes with like.” In the diagram
to the left, designs of automobiles and prehistoric European axes have been
arranged in a relative chronological sequence; however, the rate of change
(a century for the automobile, millennia for the axe) has to be deduced from
absolute dating methods.
For many purposes, the best way to assign a relative date to an artifact
is to match it with an artifact already recognized within a well-established
typological system. Pottery typologies usually form the backbone of the
chronological system, and nearly every area has its own well-established
ceramic sequence. One example is the very extensive ceramic sequence for the
ancient societies of the American Southwest, a part of which is shown in
the diagram opposite. If such a typology is tied into a stratigraphic sequence
of deposits that can be dated by radiocarbon or other absolute means, then
112 4 • When?
the artifacts in the typological sequence can themselves
PHASE DECORATION SHAPE
be assigned absolute dates in years.
Different types of artifact change in style (decoration
and shape) at different rates, and therefore vary in the
SACATON chronological distinctions that they indicate. Usually,
1000–1175 ce
with pottery, surface decoration changes most rapidly
(often over periods of just a few decades) and is therefore
the best attribute to use for a typological sequence. On the
other hand, the shape of a vessel or container may be most
strongly influenced by a practical requirement, such as
water storage, which need not alter for hundreds of years.
SANTA CRUZ Other artifacts, such as metal weapons or tools, can
875–1000 ce
change in style quite rapidly, and so may be useful
chronological indicators. By contrast, stone tools, such
as hand-axes, are often very slow to change in form and
therefore rarely make useful indicators of the passage of
time (and are more useful in making general distinctions
GILA BUTTE
800–875 ce
between much longer periods).
Seriation: Comparing Assemblages of Objects

The insights of the principle that “like goes with like” have
been developed further to deal with associations of finds
(assemblages) rather than with the forms of single objects
SNAKETOWN taken in isolation. The technique of seriation allows
750–800 ce
assemblages of artifacts to be arranged in a succession or
serial order, which is then taken to indicate their ordering
in time, or their relative chronology.
The great pioneer of Egyptian archaeology, Sir William
Flinders Petrie, was one of the first to develop a technique
SWEETWATER
for arranging the graves of a cemetery in relative order by
700–750 ce
considering carefully and systematically the associations
of the various pottery forms found within them. His
lead in the late nineteenth century was taken up half a
century later by American scholars who realized that the
frequency of a particular ceramic style, as documented in
ESTRELLA
the successive layers of a settlement, is usually small to
650–700 ce start with, rises to a peak as the style gains popularity,
and then declines again (which diagrammatically produces
a shape like a battleship viewed from above, known as
a battleship curve). Using this insight they were able to
Pottery typology, as exemplified by this 500-year sequence
compare the pottery assemblages from different sites in
of Hohokam bowl styles from the American Southwest. the same area, each with a limited stratigraphic sequence,
Typological Sequences: Comparing Objects 113

Death’s Head Cherub Urn and Willow
1860–69
1850–59
1840–49
1830–39
1820–29
1810–19
1800–09
1790–99
1780–89
1770–79
1760–69
1750–59
1740–49
1730–39
1720–29
1710–19
1700–09
= 10 percent of the stones in a 10-year period
(Above left) Seriation: changes in the and arrange these sites into chronological order so that the ceramic frequencies
popularity of central Connecticut tombstone
designs.
would conform to the pattern of rising to a maximum and then declining.
The diagram above shows how this technique has been applied to changes
(Above right) The death’s head design.
in the popularity of three tombstone designs found in central Connecticut
cemeteries dating from 1700 to 1860. The fluctuating fortunes of each design
produce characteristic and successive battleship curves—as elsewhere in New
England, the death’s head design (peak popularity 1710–1739) was gradually
replaced by the cherub (peak 1760–1789), which in turn was replaced by the
urn and willow tree (peak 1840–1859).
Seriation has been used in an archaeological context by the American
archaeologist Frank Hole in his excavations on the Deh Luran Plain in Iran.
The Neolithic ceramic assemblages he was studying were derived from
stratigraphic excavations, so it was possible to compare the sequences
obtained through frequency seriation with the true stratigraphic sequences
discovered in their excavations. There were no serious contradictions, again
proving the validity of the method.
Environmental Sequences
So far in this chapter we have been discussing sequences that can be
established either stratigraphically for individual sites, or typologically for
artifacts. In addition, there is a major class of sequences, based on changes
114 4 • When?
in the Earth’s climate, that has proved useful for relative dating on a local,
regional, and even global scale. Some of these environmental sequences can
also be dated by various absolute methods.
The Ice Age (or Pleistocene epoch, dating from 2.6 million years ago to
11,700 years ago), when world temperatures were usually much lower and
ice covered large parts of the Earth’s surface, was not one long unbroken
spell of cold. A complex sequence of cold periods (called glacials) were
separated by warmer interludes (called interglacials). The interglacial period
we now live in, known as the Holocene, covers the last 11,700 years. These
climatic fluctuations are recorded in deep-sea cores, ice cores, and sediments
containing pollen.
deep-sea CoRes and iCe CoRes. The most coherent record of climatic
changes on a worldwide scale is provided by deep-sea cores. These contain
shells of microscopic marine organisms known as foraminifera, laid down
on the ocean floor through the slow continuous process of sedimentation.
Variations in the chemical structure of these shells are a good indicator of
the sea temperature at the time the organisms were alive. Cold episodes in the
deep-sea cores relate to glacial periods of ice advance, and the warm episodes
to interglacial periods of ice retreat. Radiocarbon and uranium-series dating
(see pp. 123–30) can also be applied to the foraminiferan shells to provide
absolute dates for the sequence, which now stretches back 2.3 million years.
As with deep-sea cores, cores extracted from the polar ice of the Arctic and
Antarctic have yielded impressive sequences revealing past climatic changes.
The layers of compacted ice represent annual deposits for the last 2000–3000
years that can be counted—thus giving an absolute chronology for this part
Foraminifera. These tiny (up to 1 mm-long)
of the sequence. For earlier time periods—at greater depths—the annual
shells form the deep-sea sediments of the stratification is no longer visible, and dating of the ice cores is much less
ocean floor. Analysis of shells in successive
sediment layers gives a record of world sea
certain. Good correlations have been made with climatic variations deduced
temperature change. from the study of the deep-sea cores.
Evidence of major volcanic eruptions can also be preserved in the ice cores,
theoretically meaning that particular eruptions, such as the huge Thera
eruption in the Aegean roughly 3500 years ago (associated by some scholars
with the destruction of Minoan palaces on Crete), can be given a precise
absolute date. In practice, though, it is hard to be certain that a volcanic event
preserved in the ice actually relates to a particular historically documented
eruption—it could relate to an unknown eruption that happened somewhere
else in the world.
pollen dating. All flowering plants produce grains called pollen, and these
are almost indestructible, surviving for many thousands (and even millions)
of years in all types of conditions. The preservation of pollen in bogs and lake
Environmental Sequences 115

sediments has allowed pollen experts (palynologists) to construct detailed
Key Concepts sequences of past vegetation and climate. These sequences are an immense
Environmental Dating help in understanding ancient environments, but they have also been—
Methods and to some extent still are—important as a method of relative dating.
The best-known pollen sequences are those developed for the Holocene
Deep-sea Cores: analysis of the of northern Europe, where an elaborate succession of so-called pollen zones
chemical structure of microscopic covers the last 10,000 years. By studying pollen samples from a particular
marine organisms in datable site, that site can often be fitted into a broader pollen zone sequence and
layers of sediment can be used
thus assigned a relative date. Isolated artifacts and such finds as bog bodies
to reconstruct climate and provide
a relative chronology
discovered in contexts where pollen is preserved can also be dated in the
same way. It is important to remember, however, that the pollen zones are
Ice Cores: layers of annual ice not uniform across large areas. Regional pollen zone sequences must first
deposits can produce a chronology be established, and then the sites and finds in the area can be linked to them.
of world climate
If tree-ring or radiocarbon dates are available for all or part of the sequence,
Pollen Dating: pollen produced
we can work out an absolute chronology for the region.
by past vegetation in a given area Thanks to the durability of pollen grains, they can yield environmental
can reveal the climate of particular evidence even as far back as 3 million years ago for sites in East Africa.
pollen zones and help to produce Different interglacial periods in such areas as northern Europe have also
a relative chronology
been shown to have characteristic pollen sequences, which means that the
pollen evidence at an individual site in the area can sometimes be matched
to a particular interglacial—a useful dating mechanism since radiocarbon
cannot be used for these early time periods.
ABSOLUTE DATING
Although relative dating methods can be extremely useful, archaeologists
ultimately want to know how old sequences, sites, and artifacts are in calendar
years. To achieve this they need to use the methods of absolute dating
described in the following sections. The three most commonly used and
most important to the archaeologist are calendars and historical chronologies,
tree-ring dating, and radiocarbon dating. For the Paleolithic period,
potassium-argon dating and uranium-series dating are vital. Genetic dating
is also now beginning to be used to date population events.
Calendars and Historical Chronologies

Until the development of the first scientific dating techniques around the
beginning of the twentieth century, dating in archaeology depended almost
entirely on historical methods. That is to say, it relied on archaeological
connections with chronologies and calendars that people in ancient times
had themselves established. Such dating methods are still of immense value
today. In the ancient world, literate societies recorded their own history in
116 4 • When?
written documents. In Egypt, the Near East, and ancient China, for example,
history was recorded in terms of the successive kings, who were organized in
groups of dynasties. As we shall see, there were also very precise calendrical
systems in Mesoamerica.
Archaeologists have to bear in mind three main points when working with
early historical chronologies. First, the chronological system requires careful
reconstruction, and any list of rulers or kings needs to be reasonably complete.
Second, the list, although it may reliably record the number of years in each
reign, has still to be linked with our own calendar. Third, the artifacts, features,
or structures to be dated at a particular site have somehow to be related to the
historical chronology, for example by their association with an inscription
referring to the ruler of the time.
These points can be well illustrated by the Egyptian and Maya chronologies.
Egyptian history is arranged in terms of thirty-one dynasties, themselves
organized into the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms. The modern view is a
synthesis based on several documents including the so-called Turin Royal
Chronological table summarizing the spans
of time for which different absolute dating
Canon. This synthesis gives an estimate of the number of years in each reign,
methods are applicable. right down to the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in the year 332 bce
YEARS 0
AGO
Calendars Tree- Thermo- Archaeo-
2000 rings lumi- magnetism
nescence
and
10,000
Radio- optical
carbon dating
20,000
Uranium- Electron
50,000
series spin
resonance
100,000
500,000
1,000,000
Potassium- Fission- Geomagnetic

argon track reversals
5,000,000
Calendars and Historical Chronologies 117

(a date recorded by Greek historians). So the Egyptian dynasties can be dated
by working backward from there, although the exact length of every reign
is not known. This system can be confirmed and refined using astronomy:
Egyptian historical records describe observations of certain astronomical
events that can be independently dated using current astronomical knowledge
and knowledge of where in Egypt the ancient observations were carried
out. Egyptian dates are generally considered to be quite reliable after about
1500 bce, with a margin of error of perhaps one or two decades at most, but by
the time we go back to the beginning of the dynastic period, around 3100 bce,
the accumulated errors might amount to some 200 years or so.
Of the calendrical systems of Mesoamerica, the Maya calendar was the
most elaborate and precise. It was used for recording exact dates of historical
(and mythical) events in inscriptions on stone columns or stelae erected
at Maya sites during the so-called Classic period (300–900 ce). The Maya had
glyphs or signs for the days and the months, and a straightforward system of
numerals, with a stylized shell representing zero, a dot “one,” and a bar “five.”
The Maya actually had two concurrent calendrical systems, the first of which,
the Calendar Round, was used for everyday purposes. Any day in the Calendar
Round was identified by the conjunction of two different cycles: a Sacred
A Maya Long Count date in a tomb at the Round of 260 named days, and a solar year of 365 named days. A specific day
city of Río Azul, Guatemala. In modern terms
the date given equates to September 27,
would only recur once every fifty-two years.
417 ce. The second system, the Long Count, recorded days past since a mythical
zero or starting point—August 13 3113 bce in terms of our own calendar—
and was used to refer to historical (or future) dates. The understanding of
the Maya calendar, and the more recent decipherment of the Maya glyphs,
mean that a well-dated Maya history is now emerging in a way that seemed
impossible a few decades ago.
Using a Historical Chronology

It is relatively easy for the archaeologist to use a historical chronology when
abundant artifacts are found that can be related closely to it. Thus, at major
Maya sites, such as Tikal or Copan, there are numerous stelae with calendrical
inscriptions that can often be used to date the buildings with which they are
associated. The artifacts associated with the buildings can in turn be dated:
for instance, if a pottery typology has been worked out, the finding of known
types of pottery in such historically dated contexts allows the pottery typology
itself to be dated. Contexts and buildings on other sites lacking inscriptions
can be dated approximately through the occurrence of similar pot types.
Sometimes artifacts themselves carry dates, or the names of rulers that
can be dated. This is the case with many Maya ceramics that bear hieroglyphic
inscriptions. For the Roman and medieval periods of Europe, coins normally
carry the name of the issuing ruler, and inscriptions or records elsewhere
118 4 • When?
usually allow the ruler to be dated. But it is crucial to remember that to
date a coin or an artifact is not the same thing as to date the context in
which it is found. The date of the coin indicates the year in which it was
made. Its inclusion within a sealed archaeological deposit establishes simply
a terminus post quem (Latin for “date after which”): in other words, the deposit
can be no earlier than the date on the coin—but it could be later (perhaps
much later) than that date.
A well-established historical chronology in one country may be used
to date events in neighboring and more far-flung lands that lack their own
historical records but are mentioned in the histories of the literate society.
Similarly, archaeologists can use exports and imports of objects to extend
chronological linkages by means of cross-dating with other regions. For
instance, the presence of foreign pottery in well-dated ancient Egyptian
contexts establishes a terminus ante quem (“date before which”) for the
manufacture of that pottery: it cannot be more recent than the Egyptian
context. In addition, Egyptian objects, some with inscriptions allowing them
to be accurately dated in Egyptian terms, occur at various sites outside Egypt,
thereby helping to date the contexts in which they are found.
Dating by historical methods remains the most important procedure
for the archaeologist in countries with a reliable calendar supported by
a significant degree of literacy. Where there are serious uncertainties over
the calendar, or over its correlation with the modern calendrical system,
the correlations can often be checked using other absolute dating methods,
to be described below.
Outside the historic and literate lands, however, cross-dating and broad
typological comparisons have been almost entirely superseded by the various
scientifically based dating methods described below. Now, all the world’s
cultures can be assigned absolute dates.
Annual Cycles
Any absolute dating method depends on the existence of a regular, time-
dependent process. The most obvious of these is the system by which we order
our modern calendar: the rotation of the Earth around the sun once each year.
Because this yearly cycle produces regular annual fluctuations in climate, it has
an impact on features of the environment that can in certain cases be measured
to create a chronology. For absolute dating purposes the sequence needs to
be a long one (with no gaps), linked somehow to the present day, and capable
of being related to the structures or artifacts we actually want to date.
Evidence of these annual fluctuations in climate is widespread.
For example, the changes in temperature in polar regions result in annual
variations in the thickness of polar ice, which scientists can study from
cores drilled through the ice (see p. 115). Similarly, in lands bordering the
Annual Cycles 119

polar regions, the melting of the ice sheets each year when temperatures rise
leads to the formation of annual deposits of sediment in lake beds, called
varves, which can be counted. Considerable deposits of varves were found
in Scandinavia, representing thousands of years, stretching (when linked
together) from the present back to the beginning of the retreat of the glacial
ice sheets in that region some 13,000 years ago. The method allowed, for the
first time, a fairly reliable estimate for the date of the end of the last Ice Age,
and hence made a contribution to archaeological chronology not only in
Scandinavia but also in many other parts of the world.
But today, while varves remain of restricted use, another annual cycle,
that of tree-rings, has come to rival radiocarbon as the main method of dating
for the last few thousand years in many parts of Europe, North America,
and Japan.
Section of an oak beam from the wall

of a log cabin in Hanover, Pennsylvania:
Tree-ring Dating
the annual growth rings are clearly visible, The modern technique of tree-ring dating (dendrochronology) was
and since this sample contains complete
sapwood (top of image), a precise felling
developed by an American astronomer, A.E. Douglass, in the early decades
date of 1850/1 can be established. of the last century—although many of the principles had been understood
long before that. Working on well-preserved timbers in the arid American
Southwest, by 1930 Douglass could assign absolute dates to many of the
major sites there, such as Mesa Verde and Pueblo Bonito. But it was not
until the end of the 1930s that the technique was introduced to Europe,
and only in the 1960s that the use of statistical procedures and computers
laid the foundations for the establishment of the long tree-ring chronologies
now so fundamental to modern archaeology. Today dendrochronology has
two distinct archaeological uses: (1) as a successful means of calibrating
or correcting radiocarbon dates (see below, pp. 125–28); and (2) as an
independent method of absolute dating in its own right.
basis of Method. Most trees produce a ring of new wood each year, and
these circles of growth can easily be seen in a cross-section of the trunk of a
felled tree. These rings are not of uniform thickness. In an individual tree, they
will vary for two reasons. First, the rings become narrower with the increasing
age of the tree. Second, the amount a tree grows each year is affected by
fluctuations in climate. In arid regions, rainfall above the average one year will
produce a particularly thick annual ring. In more temperate regions, sunlight
and temperature may be more critical than rainfall in affecting a tree’s growth.
Here, a sharp cold spell in spring may produce a narrow growth ring.
Dendrochronologists measure and plot these rings and produce a diagram
indicating the thickness of successive rings in an individual tree. Trees of the
same species growing in the same area will generally show the same pattern of
rings so that the growth sequence can be matched between successively older
120 4 • When?
1940 1960 1980
Newly cut tree A
1940
Beam from a house B
1920
Beam from an C A
older house
1900 1920 B
D
Timber samples from archaeological sites, when
matched and overlapped, extend the dating back E
into prehistory
F
Tree-ring dating: annual growth rings timbers to build up a chronology for an area. (It is not necessary to fell trees
can be counted, matched, and overlapped,
to build up a master sequence for a
in order to study the ring sequence: a usable sample can be extracted by
particular region. boring without harming the tree.) By matching sequences of rings from
living trees of different ages as well as from old timber, dendrochronologists
can produce a long, continuous sequence, such as that in the diagram above,
extending back hundreds, even thousands, of years from the present. Thus,
when an ancient timber of the same species (e.g. Douglas fir in the American
Southwest or oak in Europe) is found, it should be possible to match its tree-
ring sequence of, say, 100 years with the appropriate 100-year length of the
master sequence or chronology. In this way, the felling date for that piece of
timber can usually be dated to within a year.
appliCations. One of the most important uses of tree-ring dating has been
the development of long tree-ring sequences, against which it is possible to
check radiocarbon dates. The pioneering research was done in Arizona on a
remarkable species, the Californian bristlecone pine, which can live up to 4900
years. By matching samples from dead trees also, an unbroken sequence was
built up back from the present as far as 6700 bce. The importance of this for
the calibration of radiocarbon dates is discussed below. The research in the
American Southwest has been complemented by studies in Europe of tree-
rings of oak, often well preserved in waterlogged deposits. The oak sequence
in Northern Ireland stretches back unbroken to c. 5300 bce, and the master
sequence in western Germany to c. 8500 bce.
Annual Cycles 121

Direct tree-ring dating of preserved timber found in archaeological
Key Concepts contexts has itself been important in several areas, but results are particularly
Tree-ring Dating impressive in the American Southwest, where the technique is longest
established and wood is well preserved in the arid conditions. For instance,
Method: based on the annual cycle Betatakin, a cliff dwelling in Arizona, has been precision dated using
of tree-ring growth dendrochronology so that not only do we know that the settlement was
founded in 1267 ce, but we also can track the expansion of the site room
Range: up to 5300 bce (Northern
by room, year by year, until it reached a peak in the mid-1280s, before being
Ireland); 6700 bce (United States);
8500 bce (Germany)
abandoned shortly thereafter.
Precision: one year liMiting faCtoRs. Unlike radiocarbon, dendrochronology is not a

worldwide dating method because of two basic limitations:
Applications: direct dating of wood;
calibration of radiocarbon dates
1 it applies only to trees in regions outside the tropics where pronounced
Limitations: restricted to regions differences between the seasons produce clearly defined annual rings; and
outside the tropics and to certain 2 a direct tree-ring date is restricted to wood from those species that (a) have
species of tree (although calibration yielded a master sequence back from the present; (b) people actually used
is thought to work on a worldwide
in the past; and where (c) the sample affords a sufficiently long record to
scale); care must be taken
interpreting results
give a unique match.
In addition, there are important questions of interpretation to consider.

A tree-ring date refers to the date of felling of the tree. This is determined
by matching the tree-ring sample ending with the outermost rings
(the sapwood) to a regional sequence. Where most or all of the sapwood
is missing, the felling date cannot be identified. But even with an accurate
felling date, the archaeologist has to make a judgment—based on context
as well as formation processes—about how soon after felling the timber
entered the archaeological deposit. Timbers may be older or younger than
the structures into which they were finally incorporated, depending on
whether they were reused from somewhere else, or used to make a repair
in a long-established structure. The best solution is to take multiple
samples, and to check the evidence carefully on-site. Despite these
qualifications, dendrochronology looks set to become the major dating
technique, alongside radiocarbon, for the last 8000 years in temperate
and arid lands.
Radioactive Clocks
Many of the most important developments in absolute dating have come
from the use of what might be called radioactive clocks, based on a widespread
and regular feature in the natural world, radioactive decay. The best known
of these methods is radiocarbon, today the main dating tool for the last 50,000
years or so.
122 4 • When?
Radiocarbon Dating
Radiocarbon is the single most useful method of dating for the archaeologist.
As we shall see, it has its limitations, both in terms of accuracy, and for the
time range where it is useful. Archaeologists themselves are also the cause of
major errors, thanks to poor sampling procedures and careless interpretation.
Nevertheless, radiocarbon has transformed our understanding of the past,
helping archaeologists to establish for the first time a reliable chronology
of world cultures.
histoRy and basis of Method. In 1949, the American chemist Willard

Libby published the first radiocarbon dates. During World War II he had been
studying cosmic radiation, the sub-atomic particles that constantly bombard
the Earth. These produce high-energy neutrons, which in turn react with
nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere to produce atoms of carbon-14 (14C),
or radiocarbon, which are unstable because they have eight neutrons in
the nucleus instead of the usual six as for ordinary carbon (see box overleaf).
This instability leads to radioactive decay of 14C at a regular rate. Libby
estimated that it took 5568 years for half the 14C in any sample to decay—
its half-life (see diagram below)—although modern research indicates that
the more accurate figure is 5730 years.
Libby realized that the decay of radiocarbon at a constant rate should
be balanced by its constant production through cosmic radiation, and that
therefore the proportion of 14C in the atmosphere should remain the same
(Below left) Radiocarbon is produced in
the atmosphere and absorbed by plants
through carbon dioxide, and by animals (Below right) After death, the amount
through feeding off plants or other animals. of 14C decays at a known rate (50 percent
Uptake of 14C ceases when the plant after 5730 years, etc.). Measurement of the
or animal dies. amount left in a sample gives the date.
NEUTRON + NITROGEN-14
100
CARBON-14
PERCENTAGE OF CARBON-14 REMAINING
CARBON DIOXIDE
50
25
12.5
6.25
3.125
0 5730 11,460 17,190 22,920 28,650
AGE IN YEARS

The Principles of
Radioactive Decay
Like most elements occurring in nature, emission of weak beta radiation back thousands of millions of years to a
carbon exists in more than one isotopic to its precursor isotope of nitrogen— minute fraction of a second. But in
form. It has three isotopes: 12C, 13C, 14
N—with seven protons and seven every case, there is a regular pattern
and 14C—the numbers correspond to neutrons in a nucleus. Like all types to the decay.
the atomic masses of these isotopes. of radioactive decay the process takes Carbon-12
Carbon-12
atomatom
In any sample of carbon, 98.9 percent place at a constant rate, independent
of atoms are of 12C type and have of all environmental conditions.
six protons and six neutrons in the The time taken for half of the atoms
nucleus, and 1.1 percent are of the of a radioactive isotope to decay is
13
C type with six protons and seven called its half-life. In other words, after
neutrons. Only one atom in a million one half-life, there will be half of the
millions of atoms of carbon will be that atoms left; after two half-lives, one-
of the isotope 14C, with eight neutrons quarter of the original quantity of the Carbon-12 Carbon-14
Carbon-14
atom atomatom
in the nucleus. This isotope of carbon is isotope remains, and so on. In the case
produced in the upper atmosphere by of 14C, the half-life is now agreed to be
Neutron
Neutron
cosmic rays bombarding nitrogen (14N) 5730 years.
and it contains an excess of neutrons, Half-lives of radioactive isotopes Proton
Proton
making it unstable. It decays by the of other elements can range from
Carbon-14
atom
throughout time. Furthermore, this steady atmospheric concentration of
radiocarbon is passed on uniformly to all livingNeutron
things through carbon dioxide,
as part of what is known as the carbon cycle. Plants
Proton take up carbon dioxide
during photosynthesis, they are eaten by herbivorous animals, which in turn
are eaten by carnivores. When a plant or animal dies the uptake of 14C ceases,
and the steady concentration of 14C begins to decline through radioactive decay.
Thus, knowing the decay rate or half-life of 14C, Libby recognized that the age
of dead plant or animal tissue could be calculated by measuring the amount
of radiocarbon left in a sample. Samples usually consist of organic materials
found on archaeological sites, such as charcoal, wood, seeds, and other plant
remains, and human or animal bone. Inorganic materials, for example stone,
are not part of the carbon cycle and so cannot be radiocarbon dated.
Libby’s great practical achievement was to devise an accurate means of
measurement. He discovered that each atom of 14C decays by releasing a beta
particle, and he succeeded in counting these emissions using a Geiger counter,
still the basis of the conventional method employed by many radiocarbon
laboratories today. Advances were made in the late 1970s and early 1980s with
the introduction of special gas counters capable of taking measurements from
very small samples.
124 4 • When?
In the conventional method some 5 g of pure carbon after purification was
needed, which means an original sample of some 10–20 g of wood or charcoal,
or 100–200 g of bone. The special gas-counting equipment required only a few
hundred milligrams (mg) of charcoal.
Increasingly, the accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) method is becoming
the dominant technique used in radiocarbon dating. This requires smaller
samples still. Disregarding their radioactivity, AMS counts the atoms of 14C
directly. The minimum sample size is reduced to as little as 5–10 mg—thus
enabling precious organic materials, such as the Turin Shroud (see p. 129), to
be sampled and directly dated, and making feasible the direct dating of pollen.
Initially it was hoped that the datable timespan for radiocarbon using AMS
could be pushed back from 50,000 to 80,000 years, although this is proving
difficult to achieve, in part because of sample contamination.
Radiocarbon dates are usually quoted in years bp (before the present,
currently taken to be 1950 ce), but because the accurate measurement of the
14
C activity of a sample is affected by counting errors, background cosmic
radiation, and other intrinsic factors, there is always an element of uncertainty
to the measurements. Thus there is always a statistical error or standard
Key Concepts deviation attached to a radiocarbon date, expressed as a plus/minus term.
Radiocarbon Dating Radiocarbon dates are quoted with an error of one standard deviation. For
a date of 3700 ±100 bp, for example, this means that there is a 68.2 percent
Method: based on the regular decay
of a radioactive isotope of carbon
probability, or roughly two chances in three, that the correct estimate in
radiocarbon years lies between 3800 and 3600 bp (of course this also means
Range: 400–50,000 years ago (AMS) that there is a one in three chance that it doesn’t). Double to two standard
deviations, and there is a 95.4 percent chance (nineteen chances in twenty)
Precision: many complicating
that the radiocarbon age of the sample lies between 3900 and 3500 bp, or in
factors, but often to within
c. 50–100 years
other words 3700 ±200 bp.
But there is a complication: these dates still do not, unfortunately, equate
Applications: dating of any organic with true calendar years. To convert radiocarbon years into calendar years
matter (containing carbon); new requires calibration.
techniques allow very small sample
sizes, meaning grain, seeds, and
CalibRation of RadioCaRbon dates. One of the basic assumptions of the
precious objects can be dated
radiocarbon method has turned out to be not quite correct. Libby assumed
Calibration: radiocarbon dates that the concentration of 14C in the atmosphere has been constant through
must be calibrated to arrive at a time, but we now know that it has varied. The method that demonstrated the
calendar date
inaccuracy—tree-ring dating—has also provided the means of correcting or
Limitations: samples must be
calibrating radiocarbon dates.
carefully chosen; samples can easily Radiocarbon dates obtained from tree-rings show that before about 1000 bce
be contaminated; results can be dates expressed in radiocarbon years are increasingly too young in relation
difficult to interpret correctly and to true calendar years. In other words, before 1000 bce trees (and all other
require statistical treatment
living things) were exposed to greater concentrations of atmospheric 14C than
they are today. By obtaining radiocarbon dates systematically from the long

8000
6000
RADIOCARBON DATE (bp)

4000
2000
0
The wiggles of the INTCAL09 calibration 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0
curve over the last 9000 years. The straight
CALIBRATED DATE (Cal bp)
line indicates the ideal 1:1 timescale.
tree-ring master sequences of bristlecone pine and oak (see above, p. 121),
scientists have been able to plot radiocarbon ages against tree-ring ages
(in calendar years) to produce calibration curves, such as that illustrated above.
Broadly, these curves show that radiocarbon ages diverge increasingly from
true ages before 1000 bce, so that by 5000 bce in calendar years the radiocarbon
age is 900 years too young. Thus an age estimate in radiocarbon years of 6050 bp
might well in fact when calibrated be somewhere near 5000 bce. For dates
beyond 12,600 years ago, the current scope of tree-ring dating, scientists have
been able to use data from uranium-thorium dated corals and varve-counted
marine sediments to produce a calibration curve going back some 50,000 years.
The box opposite gives a more detailed explanation of the calibration process.
ContaMination and inteRpRetation of RadioCaRbon saMples.

Although radiocarbon dates have certain inescapable levels of error
associated with them, inaccurate results are as likely to derive from poor
sampling and incorrect interpretation by the archaeologist as from
inadequate laboratory procedures. The major sources of error in the field
are summed up below:
• Contamination before sampling. Problems of contamination of the sample

within the ground can be serious. For instance, groundwater on waterlogged
sites can dissolve organic materials and also deposit them, thus changing
the amount of 14C in a sample. These matters can usually be tackled in
the laboratory.
126 4 • When?
How to Calibrate
Radiocarbon Dates
Radiocarbon laboratories will generally date of 470 ±35 bp is represented in (the problem is particularly irksome for
supply calibrated dates of their samples, the form of a probability distribution dating in the period 800–400 bce). Even
but archaeologists may need to calibrate on the y-axis. This distribution is dating single samples at high levels of
raw radiocarbon dates themselves. transformed, using the calibration precision (some laboratories are able to
The calibration curve, part of which curve, into a probability distribution on produce dates with a ± of 15–20 years),
is illustrated opposite, shows the the x-axis, representing calendar years. or dating multiple samples (which can
relationship between radiocarbon The calibrated date at one standard then be averaged), cannot substantially
years (bp) and samples dated in actual deviation is thus 530–503 Cal bp, or improve the situation.
calendar years (Calibrated or “Cal” bp or 1420–1447 Cal ce. The parts of the
bce/ce). In order to find the calibrated radiocarbon distribution that have
age range of a radiocarbon sample, higher levels of probability also have a
a computer program is most often higher probability on the calendar scale.
used. There are several that are freely The calibration curve is full of steep
This diagram shows the calibration of a single
available on the Internet (OxCal, BCal, and sometimes wiggly sections, radiocarbon date using OxCal. The y-axis shows
CALIB, etc.). With OxCal (http://c14. including sections with plateaux the probability distribution of the radiocarbon
arch.ox.ac.uk/oxcal) a simple plot is where the amount of radiocarbon in age 470 ±35 bp (in pink). The measured age is
calibrated using the INTCAL09 calibration curve
generated of a single calibrated result, the atmosphere remains the same
(in blue), forming the new probability distribution
such as in the diagram below. In this over long periods of time. Here the (in gray), which is the calibrated age. Age ranges
example one can see the radiocarbon calibration precision is always wide at 68.2 and 95.4 percent probability are given.
OxCal v4.1.7 Bronk Ramsey (2010); r:5; Atmospheric data from Reimer et al. (2009)
OxA-124512 (470 ± 35 bp)

600
68.2% probability
(68.2%) 530–503 Cal bp
RADIOCARBON DATE (bp)
95.4% probability
(95.4%) 546–478 Cal bp
500
400
300
600 550 500 450 400 450
CALIBRATED DATE (Cal bp)
How to Calibrate Radiocarbon Dates 127

• Contamination during or after sampling. Any modern organic material coming
into contact with a sample can contaminate it, but some, such as roots and
earth, cannot always be prevented. Such sources of contamination, however,
can be eliminated in the laboratory.
• Context of deposition. Many errors arise because the excavator has not fully
understood the formation processes of the context in question. Unless it is
appreciated how the dated material found its way to its find spot, and how
and when it came to be buried, then precise interpretation is impossible.
• Date of context. Too often, it is assumed that a radiocarbon determination,
e.g. on charcoal, will simply date the charcoal’s burial. If that charcoal derives
from roof timbers that might themselves have been several centuries old
when destroyed by fire, however, then some early construction is being
dated, not the fire. For this reason, samples with a short life are often
preferred, such as twigs or charred cereal grains, which are not likely to
be old at the time of burial.
A strategy for sampling should be based on the wise saying that “one date is
Master profile for Gatecliff Shelter, no date”: several are needed. The best procedure is to work toward an internal
Nevada, showing how dates derived from
radiocarbon determinations are consistent
relative sequence of dates—for instance, in the stratigraphic succession on a
with the stratigraphic succession. well-stratified site, such as Gatecliff Shelter, Monitor Valley, Nevada, shown
left. If the samples can be arranged in relative sequence in this way, with the
lowest unit having the earliest date and so on, then there is an internal check
on the coherence of the laboratory determinations and on
the quality of field sampling. Some of the dates from such
Natural a sequence may come out older than expected. This is quite
Strata
reasonable as some of the material may have been old at
1300 ce
the time of burial. But if they come out younger (i.e. more
1 recent) than expected, then there is something wrong.
2 700 ce
3-5
Either some contamination has affected the samples, or
the laboratory has made a serious error, or the stratigraphic
6
7
1250 bce interpretation is wrong.
8
1300 bce
9
11 the iMpaCt of RadioCaRbon dating. Radiocarbon
12 10
1400 bce has undoubtedly offered the most generally useful way
13
2100–1450 bce
14 16 of answering the question “When?” in archaeology.
17 18 2300–2150 bce
19 3050–2300 bce
3150–3050 bce
The greatest advantage is that the method can be used
20 anywhere, whatever the climate, as long as there is
21
22 3300–3150 bce
material of organic (i.e. living) origin. Thus the method
23 works as well in South America or Polynesia as it does
24
25-32 3400–3300 bce in Egypt or Mesopotamia. And it can take us back 50,000
3550–3400 bce
years—although at the other end of the timescale it is too
33
imprecise to be of much use for the 400 years of the most
128 4 • When?
recent past. Radiocarbon has been incredibly important
in establishing for the first time broad chronologies for
the world’s cultures that previously lacked timescales
(such as calendars) of their own. Calibration of radiocarbon
has increased, not diminished, this success.
Radiocarbon dating by the AMS technique is opening
up new possibilities. Precious objects and works of art
can now be dated because minute samples are all that
is required. In 1988 AMS dating was used on the Turin
Shroud, a piece of cloth with the image of a man’s body
on it that many genuinely believed to be the actual imprint
of the body of Christ. Laboratories at Tucson, Oxford, and
Zurich all placed it in the range of the late thirteenth to
fourteenth centuries ce, not from the time of Christ at all,
although this remains a matter of controversy.
Part of the Turin Shroud. Radiocarbon AMS Other Radiometric Methods

dating has given a calibrated age range for
the cloth of 1260–1390 ce.
Radiocarbon is likely to maintain its position as the main dating tool back
to 50,000 years ago for organic materials, but the half-life of radiocarbon
is such that, for particularly old samples, there is hardly any radioactivity
left to measure. So, for inorganic or very ancient materials, other methods
have to be used.
The most important of them are also radiometric—they depend upon the
measurement of natural radioactivity. But they use elements the radioactive
isotopes of which have very much longer half-lives than the 5730 years of
carbon-14. They have two drawbacks. In the first place, they depend upon
elements less frequently found in archaeological contexts than is carbon.
And secondly, the long half-lives generally mean datings are less precise.
Key Concepts potassiuM-aRgon dating. The potassium-argon (K-Ar) method is used

Potassium-argon Dating by geologists to date volcanic rocks hundreds or even thousands of millions
of years old, but no more recent than around 80,000 years old.
Method: based on the decay
K-Ar dating is based on the steady but very slow decay of the radioactive
of radioactive potassium-40 into
argon-40 isotope potassium-40 (40K) to the inert gas argon-40 (40Ar) in volcanic
rock. Knowing the decay rate of 40K—its half-life is around 1.3 billion years—
Range: older than 80,000 years ago a measure of the quantity of 40Ar trapped within a 10 g rock sample gives an
estimate of the date of the rock’s formation. The principal limitation of the
Precision: ± 10 percent
technique is that it can only be used to date sites buried by volcanic rock.
Applications: dates volcanic rocks, The results are effectively geological dates for the eruption leading to the
and the archaeological remains formation of volcanic strata. Fortunately, some of the most important areas
associated with them for the study of the Lower Paleolithic, notably the Rift Valley in East Africa,
are volcanic areas. The chronology of Olduvai Gorge, for example, which has

provided important fossil remains of Australopithecus, Homo habilis, and Homo
Key Concepts erectus, has been well established by K-Ar dating. At this and other similar sites,
Uranium-series Dating archaeological remains frequently lie on volcanic strata, and moreover they are
often overlain by comparable volcanic rock, so that K-Ar dates for the two strata
Method: based on the decay of provide a time range for the material we are trying to date. The K-Ar method,
radioactive isotopes of uranium in conjunction with a variety of other techniques, has also been used to date
the important early human site at Atapuerca in Spain (see box opposite).
Range: 10,000–500,000 years ago
Precision: ± 1–10 percent

uRaniuM-seRies dating. This dating method is based on the radioactive
decay of isotopes of uranium. It has proved particularly useful for the
Applications: dates travertine period 500,000 to 50,000 years ago, which again lies outside the time range
(calcium carbonate), and associated of radiocarbon dating. In Europe, where there are relatively few volcanic
archaeological remains; also teeth.
rocks suitable for dating by the potassium-argon technique, uranium-series
Useful in areas where there is no
volcanic activity
(U-series) dating may be the method of first choice for early human sites—
it has been used effectively, for example, on the skulls and other skeletal
remains of very early Homo sapiens found at Qafzeh and Skhul caves in Israel.
It has also been used successfully at Atapuerca in Spain (also see box opposite).
The method dates the time of formation of travertine (calcium carbonate),
which is often deposited on cave walls and floors, and hence can be used to
date any material, such as an artifact or bone, embedded in a layer of travertine
or in another type of sediment between two layers of it. The method is also
applicable to teeth, since these absorb water-soluble uranium when buried.
High-precision measurement can give an error margin of fewer than 1000 years
for a 100,000-year-old sample, and the method can also be cross-checked with
electron spin resonance dates using the same materials (see p. 133).
fission-tRaCk dating. Fission-track dating depends upon the

spontaneous fission (or division) of radioactive uranium atoms (238U), present
in a wide range of rocks and minerals, which causes damage to the structures
of the minerals involved. In materials where 238U is present, including
Examples of fission tracks, after etching.
volcanic and manufactured glasses, and such minerals as zircon and apatite,
found within rock formations, the damage is recorded in pathways called
fission tracks. The tracks can be counted in the laboratory under an optical
microscope. Since we know the rate of fission of 238U, this allows the date
of formation of the rock or glass to be determined.
In this case, the radioactive clock is set at zero by the formation of
the mineral or glass, either in nature (as with obsidian) or at the time of
manufacture (as with manufactured glass). The method produces useful
dates from suitable rocks that contain or are adjacent to those containing
archaeological evidence, and has been used with success at early Paleolithic
sites, such as Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, providing independent confirmation
of potassium-argon and other results.
130 4 • When?
Dating Early Europeans l
Atapuerca
at Atapuerca, Spain
AL
PO RT UG
SPAIN
The Sierra de Atapuerca, near Burgos of teeth confirmed the Lower

in northern Spain, is a veritable treasure Pleistocene dates.
house of sites—mostly infilled caves— At the Galeria site, the lowest
that are rewriting the early prehistory layers have been dated to more
of western Europe, where human than 780,000 years ago by means of
occupation before 500,000 years ago archaeomagnetism (which indicated
had been doubtful. Excavations there a period of reversed polarity known
have been continuing for decades, but as the Matuyama epoch), while younger
still only a tiny fraction of the Sierra’s layers have been dated by electron
contents have been investigated. spin resonance and uranium-series
Atapuerca ranks as one the world’s to 350,000–300,000 and 200,000
most important archaeological areas. years ago.
A variety of dating techniques The Sima del Elefante has a deep
(Above) Some of the 5500 human fossils from
has been used, from faunal analysis stratigraphy; faunal, microfaunal, the Sima de los Huesos, dating to more than
(making comparisons between animal and archaeomagnetic analyses here 430,000 years ago.
remains found at the site and others of
known date) to radiocarbon, potassium-
have shown that the lowest section—
argon, and uranium-series. They have
which has yielded stone flakes made
combined to present evidence of
by humans—dates to the Lower
human occupation stretching back
Pleistocene, more than 1 million years
more than 1 million years. Of particular
ago. In 1998 it was announced that
importance are levels at the Gran
a human jaw together with stone tools
Dolina site, dating from c. 800,000 to
had been recovered from a layer that
1 million years ago. In 1994 human
a number of methods has combined
remains and stone tools found in them
to place at 1.1–1.2 million years ago,
provided the first undeniable evidence
making it the oldest and most securely
for hominins in Europe during the
dated record of human occupation
Lower Pleistocene—the hominins
in Europe.
were given a new species name,
Microfaunal analysis, electron
Homo antecessor. Electron spin
spin resonance, and uranium-series
resonance and uranium-series dating
methods in the Sima de los Huesos
have established that a speleothem
(mineral deposit) that covers the layer
containing human bones dates to at
least 430,000 years ago, while high-
resolution uranium-series dates have
shown that the bodies were placed
here about 600,000 years ago.
(Center) The skull of Homo antecessor,

found at Gran Dolina.
(Left) Excavation at Gran Dolina.
Dating Atapuerca 131

Other Absolute Dating Methods
There are several more dating methods that can be used in special
circumstances, but none is as important in practice to archaeologists as those
already described. Some are of relevance to the solution of specific problems,
such as the dating of Paleolithic rock art. Several of the most significant are
mentioned below, so that the overview given in this chapter is reasonably
complete. But the discussion here is deliberately kept brief, to give a flavour
of a field that can easily become rather complicated, and that is not directly
relevant to much mainstream archaeology. The rather special case of DNA
dating is of particular interest.
theRMoluMinesCenCe dating. Thermoluminescence (TL) dating can be

used to date crystalline materials (minerals) buried in the ground that have
been fired—usually pottery, but also baked clay, burnt stone, and in some
circumstances burnt soil. But unfortunately it is a method that is difficult
to make precise, and so it is generally used when other methods, such as
radiocarbon dating, are not available.
Like many other methods it depends upon radioactive decay, but in this
case it is the amount of radioactivity received by the specimen since the start
date that is of interest, not the radiation emitted by the specimen itself. When
atoms located within the structure of a mineral are exposed to radiation from
the decay of radioactive elements in the nearby environment, some of that
energy is “trapped.” If the amount of radiation remains constant over time,
then this energy will accumulate at a uniform rate and the total amount of
energy will depend upon the total time of exposure. When a sample is heated
to 500°C or more, the trapped energy is released as thermoluminescence,
and the radioactive clock is set back to zero.
This means that archaeological artifacts, such as pottery, will have had
their clocks reset when they were originally fired, and that by reheating
Key Concepts
samples from these objects, we can measure the thermoluminescence
Thermoluminescence
released and hence date the material. The main complication of the method
Dating
is that the level of background radiation that a sample might have been
exposed to is not uniform—it must be measured for every sample by burying
Range: up to 100,000 years ago
a small capsule containing a radiation-sensitive material, or by using a
Precision: ± 5–10 percent on site; radiation counter at the exact spot the sample was found. In general, the
25 percent otherwise difficulties of making these measurements mean that TL dates rarely have
a precision of better than ±10 percent of the age of the sample.
Applications: dates minerals
A good example of the archaeological application of TL is the dating
that have been sufficiently heated
and then buried. Can be applied
of the terracotta head known as the Jemaa head, from the alluvium of a tin
to pottery, other baked clay, mine near the Jos Plateau of Nigeria. The head and similar examples belong
and burnt stone to the Nok culture, but such sculptures could not be dated reliably at the
site of Nok itself because of the lack of any plausible radiocarbon dates.
132 4 • When?
A TL reading on the head gave an age of 1520 ±260 bce, allowing this and
similar heads from the Nok region to be given a firm chronological position
for the first time.
optiCal dating. This method is similar in principle to TL, but it is used to

date minerals that have been exposed to light, rather than heat. Most minerals
contain some trapped energy that will be released by several minutes’
exposure to sunlight. Such exposure is in effect the start point. Once buried
they begin to accumulate electrons once more, as a result of radioactive
radiation experienced in the soil. In the laboratory, optically stimulated
luminescence (OSL) is produced by directing light of a visible wavelength
onto the sample, and the resultant luminescence is measured. And once again
the background radiation at the place of burial has to be measured, so optical
dating suffers from many of the same complications as TL.
eleCtRon spin ResonanCe dating. Electron spin resonance (ESR) is a

technique similar to but less sensitive than TL, but it can be used for materials
that decompose when heated and thus where TL is not applicable. Its most
successful application so far has been for the dating of tooth enamel. Newly
formed tooth enamel contains no trapped energy, but it begins to accumulate
once the tooth is buried and exposed to natural background radiation. The
precision of the method when used to date tooth enamel is in the order
of 10–20 percent, but it is still very useful for the study of early humans and
the cross-checking of other dating methods.
aRChaeoMagnetiC dating and geoMagnetiC ReveRsals.

Archaeomagnetic (or paleomagnetic) dating has so far been of limited use
in archaeology. It is based on the constant change, both in direction and
intensity, of the Earth’s magnetic field. The direction of that magnetic field at
a particular time is recorded in any baked-clay structure (oven, kiln, hearth, etc.)
that has been heated to a temperature of 650 to 700°C. At that temperature the
iron particles in the clay permanently take up the Earth’s magnetic direction
and intensity at the time of firing. This principle is called thermoremanent
magnetism (TRM). Charts can be built up of the variation through time that
can be used to date baked-clay structures of unknown age, the TRM of which
is measured and then matched to a particular point on the master sequence.
Another aspect of archaeomagnetism, relevant for the dating of the Lower
Paleolithic, is the phenomenon of complete reversals (geomagnetic reversals)
in the Earth’s magnetic field—magnetic north becomes magnetic south, and
vice versa. The most recent major reversal occurred about 780,000 years ago,
and a sequence of such reversals stretching back several millions of years has
been built up with the aid of potassium-argon and other dating techniques.
Other Absolute Dating Methods 133

genetiC dating. The methods now being used by molecular geneticists
present rather a special case. They use DNA samples from living human
populations to date population events, notably migrations. Genetic dating
is now well established as one of the principal dating methods available in
human population studies. Using assumptions about genetic mutation rates,
they can date approximately the appearance of new genetic categories and
thus give a date to such important processes as the “Out of Africa” dispersal
of our species (around 60,000–50,000 years ago; see below). It is the
information within living humans that provides the data, not ancient
excavated samples: our past within us! Recently, however, techniques of
analysis have improved, so that it is now sometimes also possible to analyze
the DNA from human bones found in secure archaeological contexts. But in
such cases the date of the bones derives from the context, not from the DNA.
World Chronology
As a result of the application of the various dating techniques discussed
above, it is possible to summarize the world archaeological chronology,
from the evolution of human ancestors millions of years ago in Africa, to the
spread of our own species around the world, and the eventual development
of agriculture and complex societies.
Paleoanthropologists hold strongly differing
The human story as understood at present begins in East Africa, with the
views on how the fossil remains for human emergence there of the earliest hominins of the genus Australopithecus, such
evolution should be interpreted. This
diagram presents the evidence as four
as Australopithecus afarensis, around 4 million years ago, and the possibly earlier
adaptive radiations: the australopithecines Ardipithecus. By around 2 million years ago, there is clear fossil evidence for
(blue), paranthropines (green), early Homo
(purple), and later Homo (including modern
the first known representative of our own genus, Homo habilis, from such sites
humans; also purple). as Koobi Fora (Kenya) and Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania). The earliest stone tools
7 MILLION 5 MILLION 4 MILLION 3 MILLION 2 MILLION 1 MILLION 500,000 100,000 0

YEARS AGO
Kenyanthropus platyops Homo rudolfensis
Homo habilis Homo naledi
Australopithecus garhi eaRly hoMo Homo floresiensis
Australopithecus anamensis Australopithecus afarensis Homo erectus
Orrorin austRalopitheCines Homo antecessor H. neanderthalensis
Australopithecus africanus A. sediba Homo heidelbergensis Denisovans
lateR hoMo
Ardipithecus Ardipithecus ramidus Paranthropus aethiopicus Homo sapiens
kadabba
paRanthRopines Paranthropus robustus
Sahelanthropus Paranthropus boisei
134 4 • When?
(Right) This 2-million-year-old skull was
discovered in South Africa in 2008.
It has been tentatively assigned to a
new species, Australopithecus sediba,
possibly representing a transitional
phase between the australopithecines
and hominins.
(Below) Neanderthal woman. Recent work

on Neanderthal DNA has shown that these
hominins, and the ancestors of our own
species, Homo sapiens, descended from
a common ancestor who lived as recently
(from Hadar, Ethiopia) date from about 2.5 million years ago, but it is not
as 700,000 years ago. We are close cousins. known which hominin made them because Homo fossils of this age have not
yet been found. It is possible that australopithecines also had a tool culture
before or during Homo’s time. The early toolkits, comprising flake and pebble
tools, are called the Oldowan industry—after Olduvai Gorge, where they are
particularly well represented.
By more than 1.6 million years ago, the next stage in human evolution,
Homo erectus, had emerged in East Africa. These hominins had larger
brains than Homo habilis, their probable ancestor, and were makers of the
characteristic teardrop-shaped stone tools flaked on both sides called
Acheulian hand-axes. These artifacts are the dominant tool form of the
Lower Paleolithic. By the time Homo erectus became extinct (around 100,000
years ago, or possibly even as recently as 50,000 years ago), the species had
colonized the rest of Africa, southern, eastern, and western Asia, and
central and western Europe. Their remote descendants (now designated
Homo floresiensis) seem to have survived in Indonesia to around 50,000
years ago, as discoveries on the island of Flores suggest.
The Middle Paleolithic period—from about 200,000 to 40,000 years ago—
saw the emergence of modern Homo sapiens. Neanderthals, who used to be
classified as a subspecies of Homo sapiens (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) lived
in Europe and western and central Asia from about 400,000 to 30,000 years
ago. But as a result of analysis of ancient Neanderthal DNA they are now
seen as more distant cousins, and again regarded as a different species,
Homo neanderthalensis, although they may have made some contribution
to Homo sapiens DNA through contact. As a result of DNA work it seems clear
that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa, and that there was a major “Out of Africa”
expansion between 60,000 and 50,000 years ago of humans ancestral to all
present-day humans. Australia was colonized by humans some 50,000 years
ago (the dates are still debated), and Europe and Asia by at least 40,000 years
ago. There may have been an earlier dispersal of archaic modern humans who
World Chronology 135

First colonization of the world by modern
humans, with very approximate dates—in 0º 30º 60º 90º 120º 150º
years bp—and ice sheets (darker shading)
and low sea levels (white areas outside
present coastline) of c. 18,000 bp.
Many scholars believe
the Americas were
settled as early as SIBERIA
30,000–15,000 bp. 60º
35,000–
25,000
EUROPE
CENTRAL ASIA
40,000
CHINA
30º JAPAN
30,000
60,000
SAHARA
DESERT
SOUTH
ASIA SOUTHEAST
ASIA
AFRICA
NEW GUINEA
40,000
0º
ANCESTRAL INDIAN OCEAN

MODERN HUMANS
200,000–150,000
AUSTRALIA
50,000
30º
• Klasies River Mouth
TASMANIA
0 2000 miles
0 2000 km
60º
136 4 • When?
50º 180º 150º 120º 90º 60º
ARCTIC OCEAN
BERINGIA
ALASKA
15,000
NORTH AMERICA
AT L A N T I C
CLOVIS SITES
OCEAN
13,500–13,000
PACIFIC O CEAN
HAWAII
1400
MICRONESIA
PERU (COAST)
MARQUESAS ISLANDS 12,000
MELANESIA 1500
SOCIETY ISLANDS SOUTH AMERICA

1500
FIJI TONGA EASTER ISLAND

3000–2800 1300?
CHILE
14,000
NEW ZEALAND
800?

(Opposite) Monuments and sites reached the eastern Mediterranean some 100,000 to 90,000 years ago, but they
constructed by state societies around the
probably have no surviving descendants.
world (clockwise from top left): the ziggurat
of Ur, in modern Iraq, c. 2000 bce; a giant It is uncertain when humans initially crossed from northeastern Asia
Olmec head, possibly a portrait of a ruler,
into North America across the Bering Strait, and south to Central and South
Mexico, c. 1200–600 bce; elaborate reliefs
America. The earliest secure dates for the first Americans are around 14,000
at Persepolis, Iran, c. 515 bce; the Inca site
of Machu Picchu, fifteenth century ce;
the temple of Ramesses II (c. 1279– years ago, but there is controversial evidence that the continent was populated
1213 bce) at Abu Simbel, Egypt, with before then. By 10,000 bce, most of the land areas of the world, except the
statues of the pharaoh.
deserts and Antarctica, were populated. The most conspicuous exception is
the Pacific, where Western Polynesia does not seem to have been colonized
until the first millennium bce, and Eastern Polynesia progressively from
c. 300 ce. By around 1000 ce the colonization of Oceania was complete. The
spread of humans around the world is summarized in the map on pp. 136–37.
Nearly all the groups of humans so far mentioned may be regarded as
hunter-gatherer societies, made up of relatively small groups of people.
One of the most significant occurrences in world history at a global level
is the development of food production, based on domesticated plant species
and also (although in some areas to a lesser extent) of domesticated animal
species. One of the most striking facts of world prehistory
is that the transition from hunting and gathering to food
World Chronology production seems to have occurred independently in
Key Events several areas, in each case after the end of the Ice Age,
i.e. after c. 10,000 years ago.
Earliest stone tools 2.5 million years ago In the Near East, we can recognize the origins of this
transition even before this time, for the process may have
Acheulian hand-axes 1.6 million years ago been gradual, the consequence (as well as the cause)
of restructuring in the social organization of human
Homo sapiens at least 100,000 years ago
societies. At any rate, well-established farming, dependent
First Australians 50,000 years ago on wheat and barley as well as sheep and goats (and later
cattle), was underway there by about 8000 bce. Farming
First Americans 14,000 years ago or more had spread to Europe by 6500 bce, and is documented in
South Asia at Mehrgarh in Balochistan, Pakistan, at about
First farmers at least 10,000 years ago
the same time.
in the Near East
9000 years ago in China A separate development, based at first on the
9000 years ago in the cultivation of millet, seems to have taken place in China,
Americas in the valley of the Huang He (Yellow River), by 5000 bce or
8500 years ago in Europe
even earlier. Rice cultivation began at about the same time
in the Yangtze Valley in China and spread to Southeast
First state societies 5500 years ago in the
Near East Asia. The position in Africa south of the Sahara is more
3500 years ago in China complicated due to the diversity of environments, but
3500 years ago in the millet and sorghum wheat were cultivated by the third
Americas
millennium bce. The Western Pacific (Melanesian) complex
of root and tree crops had certainly developed by that
138 4 • When?
time: indeed, there are indications of field drainage for root crops
very much earlier.
In the Americas, a different range of crops was available.
Cultivation of beans, squash, peppers, and some grasses may have
begun by 7000 or even 8000 bce in Peru, and was certainly underway
there and in Mesoamerica by the seventh millennium bce. Other
South American species, including manioc and potato, were
soon added, but the plant with the greatest impact on American
agriculture was maize, believed to have been brought into
cultivation in Mexico by 5600 years ago, though possibly earlier
in northwestern Argentina.
These agricultural innovations were rapidly adopted in some areas
(e.g. in Europe), but in others, such as North America, their impact
was less immediate. Certainly, by the beginning of the Common Era,
hunter-gatherer economies were very much in the minority.
The urban revolution, the next major transformation that
we recognize widely, is not simply a change in settlement type:
it reflects profound social changes. Foremost among these is

the development of state societies displaying more clearly differentiated
institutions of government than do chiefdoms. Many state societies had
writing. We see the first state societies in the Near East by about 3500 bce,
in Egypt only a little later, and in the Indus Valley by 2500 bce. In the Near
East, the period of the early Mesopotamian city-states was marked by the
rise of such famous sites as Ur, Uruk, and later Babylon, and was followed
in the first millennium bce by an age of great empires, notably those of
Assyria and Achaemenid Persia. In Egypt, it is possible to trace the continuous
development of cultural and political traditions over more than 2000 years,
through the pyramid age of the Old Kingdom and the imperial power of the
New Kingdom.
On the western edge of the Near East, further civilizations developed:
Minoans and Mycenaeans in Greece and the Aegean during the second
millennium bce, Etruscans and Romans in the first millennium bce. At the
opposite end of Asia, state societies with urban centers appeared in China
before 1500 bce, marking the beginnings of the Shang civilization. At about the
same time, Mesoamerica saw the rise of the Olmec, the first in a long sequence
of Central American civilizations including the Maya, Zapotec, Toltec, and
Aztec. On the Pacific coast of South America, the Chavín (from 900 bce), Moche,
and Chimú civilizations laid the foundations for the rise of the vast and
powerful Inca empire that flourished in the fifteenth century ce.
The remaining story is the more familiar one of literate history, with the
rise of the Classical world of Greece and Rome as well as of China, and then
of the world of Islam, the Renaissance of Europe, and the development of the
colonial powers. From the eighteenth century to the present there followed
the independence of the former colonies, first in the Americas, then in Asia
and in Africa. We are talking now not simply of state societies but of nation
states and, especially in colonial times, of empires.
Study Questions
1 How are absolute dating methods different from relative dating methods?
2 Why is an understanding of stratigraphy vital to most relative
dating methods?
3 Why is tree-ring dating considered to be an absolute dating method?
4 Why is it necessary to calibrate radiocarbon dates?
5 What types of artifacts cannot be radiocarbon dated? Why?
6 What are some of the main sources of errors in the field of
radiocarbon dating?
140 4 • When?
Summary
the answeR to the question “When?” in archaeology has two main components.
Relative dating methods allow us to determine that something is relatively older or
younger than something else. Absolute methods make it possible to give a date in
years. Archaeological dating is at its most reliable when the two methods are used
together, e.g. when the relative order assigned to layers in an excavation can be
confirmed by absolute dates for each layer. Wherever possible, results from one
absolute method should be cross-checked by those from another.
in aReas wheRe ancient calendars and historical chronologies are available,

such as Mesoamerica, these remain one of the most important methods of absolute
dating. Elsewhere, the two methods most useful to the archaeologist are radiocarbon
dating and tree-ring dating. Although many other absolute dating techniques exist,
these tend to be reserved either for very specific applications or for sites that are
beyond the range of radiocarbon, back in the Paleolithic period.
ultiMately, the pReCision of dating attainable for each period helps determine
the kinds of questions we ask about the past—for the Paleolithic, questions are about
long-term change; for later periods, the questions are more usually concerned with
the shorter-term variations in worldwide human development.
Further Reading
The following works provide a good Speer, J. H. 2010. Fundamentals of Tree-
introduction to the principal dating Ring Research. University of Arizona
techniques used by archaeologists: Press: Tucson.
Taylor, R. E. & Aitken, M. J. (eds). 1997.
Aitken, M. J. 1990. Science-based Dating Chronometric Dating in Archaeology.
in Archaeology. Longman: London & Plenum: New York.
New York. Taylor R. E. & Bar-Yosef, O. 2013.
Biers, W. R. 1992. Art, Artefacts and Radiocarbon Dating: An
Chronology in Classical Archaeology. Archaeological Perspective
Routledge: London. (2nd ed.). Left Coast Press:
Brothwell, D. R. & Pollard, A. M. (eds). Walnut Creek, CA.
2005. Handbook of Archaeological Wintle, A. G. 1996. “Archaeologically
Sciences. Wiley: Chichester & relevant dating techniques for
New York. the next century.” Journal of
Pollard, A. M. et al. 2007. Analytical Archaeological Science 23, 123–38.
Chemistry in Archaeology. Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge. [See p. 345 for a list of useful websites]

5 How Were Societies
Organized?
Social Archaeology
Establishing the Nature and

Scale of the Society 144
Classification of Societies 144
Challenging Social Categories 147
Methods of Social Analysis 148

Settlement Analysis and Site
Hierarchy 148
❑ Conspicuous Ranking at Mississippian
Spiro 154
Burial Analysis: The Study of Ranking
from Individual Burials 157
Monuments and Public Works 158
Written Records 162
Ethnoarchaeology 164
The Archaeology of the

Individual and of Identity 167
Social Inequality 167
Ethnicity and Conflict 169
Investigating Gender 170
Study Questions 173

Summary 174
Further Reading 174
Some of the most interesting questions we can ask about early societies
are social. They are about people and about relations between people, about
the exercise of power, and about the nature and scale of organization. But the
answers are not directly visible in the archaeological record: we have to ask
the right questions of the data, and devise the means of answering them.
In this respect archaeology is very different from cultural or social
anthropology, where the observer can actually visit the living society and
rapidly form conclusions about its social and power structures before moving
on to other more complex matters, such as the details of the kinship system
or the minutiae of ritual behavior. The archaeologist has to work hard to gain
even basic details of these kinds, but the prize is a rich one: an understanding
of the social organization not just of societies in the present or very recent
past (like cultural anthropology) but also of societies at many different points
in time, with all the scope that that offers for studying change. Only the
archaeologist can obtain that perspective, and hence seek some understanding
of the processes of long-term change.
Different kinds of society need different kinds of questions, and the
techniques of investigation will need to vary radically with the nature of
the evidence. The questions we put, and the methods for answering them,
must be tailored to the community we are dealing with. So it is all the more
necessary to be clear at the outset about the general nature of that community,
which is why the most basic social questions are always the first ones to ask.
We must first address the size or scale of the society. The archaeologist will
often be excavating a single site. But was that an independent political unit, for
example a Maya or Greek city-state, or a simpler unit, such as the base camp of
a hunter-gatherer group? Or was it, on the other hand, a small cog in a very big
wheel, a subordinate settlement in some far-flung empire, such as that of the
Incas of Peru? Any site we consider will have its own hinterland, or catchment
area, for the feeding of its population. But one of our interests is to go beyond
that local area, and to understand how that site interacts with others. From
5 • How Were Societies Organized? 143

the standpoint of the individual site—which is often a convenient perspective
to adopt—that raises questions of dominance. Was the site politically
independent or autonomous? Or, if it was part of a larger social system, did it
take a dominant part (like the capital city of a kingdom) or a subordinate one?
If the scale of the society is a natural first question, the next is certainly its
internal organization. What kind of society was it? Were the people forming
it on a more-or-less equal social footing? Or were there instead prominent
differences in status, rank, and prestige within the society—perhaps different
social classes? And what of the professions: were there people who specialized
in particular crafts? And if so, were they controlled within a centralized system,
as in some of the palace economies of the Near East and Egypt? Or was this a
freer economy, with flourishing free exchange, where merchants could operate
at will in their own interest?
These questions, however, may all be seen as top-down, looking at the
society from above and investigating its organization. But increasingly an
alternative perspective is being followed, looking first at the individual, and
at the way the identity of the individual in the society in question is defined—
a bottom-up perspective. Archaeologists have come to realize that the
way such important social constructs as gender, status, and even age are
constituted in a society are not “givens,” but are specific to each different
society. These insights have led to new fields: the archaeology of the
individual and the archaeology of identity.
Establishing the Nature and Scale of the Society

The first step in social archaeology is so obvious that it is often overlooked.
It is to ask, what was the scale of the largest social unit, and what kind of
society, in a very broad sense, was it? The largest social unit could be anything
from a small and completely independent hunter-gatherer band to a great
empire. In the case of a complex society it can comprise many lesser units.
In terms of research in the field, the question is often best answered from
a study of settlement: both in terms of the scale and nature of individual
sites and the relationships between them, through the analysis of settlement
pattern. But we should not forget that written records, where a society is
literate and uses writing, oral tradition, and ethnoarchaeology—the study from
an archaeological point of view of present-day societies (see pp. 164–67)—can be
equally valuable in assessing the nature and scale of the society under review.
First, however, we need a frame of reference, a hypothetical classification
of societies against which to test our ideas.
Classification of Societies
Anthropologists have outlined broad patterns of social organization that
can be applied to many human societies. The most famous (and now
144 5 • How Were Societies Organized?

controversial) is that of American anthropologist Elman Service, who
developed a four-fold classification of societies (mobile hunter-gatherer
groups, segmentary societies, chiefdoms, and states), which can be associated
with particular kinds of site and settlement pattern. Some archaeologists
question the value of such broad classifications as “chiefdom.” It is important
to recognize that human culture presents a wide array of social organizational
types that have been tried, altered, and abandoned. It would seriously
misrepresent the diversity of human prehistory to suggest that people evolved
from one classification to the next in a unilinear fashion. Yet, at a preliminary
stage of analysis, and with a cautious eye, the classifications are useful in
initially conceptualizing the size and complexity of a society.
Mobile hunter-gatherer groups. These are small-scale societies of

hunters and gatherers (sometimes called “bands”), generally of fewer than
100 people, who move seasonally to exploit wild food resources. Most
surviving hunter-gatherer groups today are of this kind, such as the San
of southern Africa. Band members are generally kinsfolk, related by descent
or marriage, and bands do not have formal leaders, so there are no marked
economic differences or disparities in status among their members.
Because bands are mobile groups, their sites consist mainly of seasonally
occupied camps, and other smaller and more specialized sites. These
include kill or butchery sites—locations where large mammals are killed and
sometimes butchered—and work sites, where tools are made or other specific
activities carried out. Camps may show evidence of insubstantial dwellings
or temporary shelters, along with the debris of residential occupation.
During the Paleolithic period (before 12,000 years ago) most archaeological
sites seem to conform to one or other of these categories—camp sites,
kill sites, work sites—and archaeologists usually operate on the assumption
that most Paleolithic societies were organized into bands.
segMentary societies. These are generally larger than mobile hunter-

gatherer groups, but their population rarely numbers more than a few
thousand, and their diet or subsistence is based largely on cultivated plants
and domesticated animals. They are sometimes referred to as “tribes.”
Typically, they are settled farmers, but they may be nomad pastoralists with a
mobile economy based on the intensive exploitation of livestock. Segmentary
societies generally consist of many individual communities integrated into
the larger society through kinship ties. Although some have officials and even
a capital or seat of government, such officials lack the economic base necessary
for effective use of power.
The typical settlement pattern for segmentary societies is one of settled
agricultural homesteads or villages. Characteristically, no one settlement
Establishing the Nature and Scale of the Society 145

dominates any of the others in the region. Instead, the archaeologist finds
evidence for isolated, permanently occupied houses (a dispersed settlement
pattern) or for permanent villages (a nucleated pattern). Such villages may be
made up of a collection of free-standing houses, for example those of the first
farmers of the Danube Valley in Europe, c. 4500 bce. Or they may be clusters of
buildings grouped together—so-called agglomerate structures—for example,
the pueblos of the American Southwest.
chiefdoMs. “Chiefdom” is a controversial term, and can mean different

things to different people. In general terms, these societies are characterized
by ranking—differences in social status between people. Different lineages
(a lineage is a group claiming descent from a common ancestor) are graded
on a scale of prestige, and the senior lineage, and hence the society as a whole,
is governed by a chief. Prestige and rank are determined by closeness of
relationship to the chief. There is no true stratification into classes, and the role
of the chief is crucial. Chiefdoms vary greatly in size, but the range is generally
between about 5000 and 20,000 persons.
Often, there is local specialization in craft production, and surpluses of these
and of foodstuffs are periodically paid as obligations to the chief. He uses these
to maintain his close personal followers, and may use them for redistribution
to his subjects.
The chiefdom generally has a center of power, often with temples, residences
of the chief and his retainers, and craft specialists. It is a permanent ritual
and ceremonial center that acts as a central focus for the entire group. This is
not, however, a permanent urban center (such as a city) with an established
bureaucracy, as we find in state societies. But chiefdoms do give indications that
some sites were more important than others (or in other words, that there was
a site hierarchy). An example is provided by the Mississippian-period site of
Spiro in Oklahoma (see box, pp. 154–55).
The personal ranking characteristic of chiefdom societies is also visible in the
very rich grave-goods that often accompany the burials of deceased chiefs.
early states. These share many of the features of chiefdoms, but the ruler
(perhaps a king or sometimes a queen) has explicit authority to establish laws
and also to enforce them by the use of a standing army. Society no longer
depends totally upon kin relationships: it is now stratified into different
classes. Agricultural workers or serfs and the poorer urban dwellers form the
lowest classes, with the craft specialists above, and the priests and kinsfolk of
the ruler higher still. The functions of the ruler are often separated from those
of the priest: palace is distinguished from temple. The territory is “owned”
by the ruling lineage and populated by tenants who have an obligation to pay
taxes. Taxes and other revenues are collected by officials based in the central

capital, and then distributed to government, army, and craft specialists.
Many early states developed complex redistributive systems to support
these essential services.
Early state societies generally show a characteristic urban settlement
pattern in which cities play a prominent part. The city is typically a large
population center (often of more than 5000 inhabitants) with major public
buildings, including temples and work places for the administrative
bureaucracy. Often, there is a pronounced settlement hierarchy, with the
capital city as the major center, and with subsidiary or regional centers
as well as local villages.
Challenging Social Categories

The rather simple social typology presented here should not be used
unthinkingly. For instance, there is some difference between the rather vague
idea of the tribe and the more modern concept of the segmentary society.
The term tribe, implying a larger grouping of smaller units, carries with it
the assumption that these communities share a common ethnic identity
and self-awareness, which is now known not generally to be the case. The
term segmentary society refers to a relatively small and autonomous group,
usually of agriculturalists, who regulate their own affairs: in some cases,
they may join together with other comparable segmentary societies to form
a larger ethnic unit or tribe; in other cases, they do not. For the remainder
of this chapter, we shall therefore refer to segmentary societies in preference
to the term tribe. And what in Service’s typology were called bands are now
more generally referred to as mobile hunter-gatherer groups.
Certainly, it would be wrong to overemphasize the importance of the four
types of society given above, or to spend too long trying to decide whether
a specific group should be classed in one category rather than another. It
would also be wrong to assume that somehow societies inevitably evolve
from hunter-gatherer groups to segmentary societies, or from chiefdoms
to states. One of the challenges of archaeology is to attempt to explain why
some societies become more complex and others do not. While a degree of
categorization offers a framework to help organize our thoughts, it should not
deflect us from focusing on what we are really looking for: changes over time
in the different institutions of a society—whether in the social sphere, the
organization of the food quest, technology, contact and exchange, or spiritual
life. Archaeology has the unique advantage of being able to study processes
of change over thousands of years, and it is these processes we are seeking to
isolate. Fortunately there are sufficiently marked differences between simple
and more complex societies for us to find ways of doing this.
As we saw above, in the description of Service’s four types of society,
complex societies show in particular an increased specialization in,
Establishing the Nature and Scale of the Society 147

or separation between, different aspects of their culture. In complex societies
people no longer combine, say, the tasks of obtaining food, making tools,
or performing religious rites, but become specialists at one or other of these
tasks, either as full-time farmers, craftspeople, or priests. As technology
develops, for example, groups of individuals may acquire particular expertise
in pottery-making or metallurgy, and will become full-time craft specialists,
occupying distinct areas of a town or city and thus leaving traces for the
archaeologist to discover. Likewise, as farming develops and population
grows, more food will be obtained from a given piece of land (food production
will intensify) through the introduction of the plow or irrigation. As this
specialization and intensification take place, so too does the tendency for
some people to become wealthier and wield more authority than others—
differences in social status and ranking develop.
It is the methods for looking at these processes of increasing specialization,
intensification, and social ranking that help us identify the presence of
more complex societies in the archaeological record. For simpler groups
like hunter-gatherers, other methods are needed if we are to identify them
archaeologically, as will become apparent.
Methods of Social Analysis

Different methods are suitable for investigating the social interactions and
social structures of different kinds of societies. The principal source of data
about early societies comes from settlement analysis and excavation.
The study of burials with their associated artifacts is often a very good way
of assessing the dress, possessions, and status of deceased individuals in
a society. For some societies, the study of the monuments that they have
built can also be very informative.
The data available from a hunter-gatherer camp are naturally very different
from those from a city. For one thing, state societies are often literate societies,
and written records may be available. For societies for which no written
testimony is available, archaeologists have often relied upon ethnographic
analogy, drawing upon what anthropologists have observed in more recent
non-urban societies so as to suggest interpretations for what is found in
the archaeological record. Ethnoarchaeology, as this field is known, seeks
to use the experience derived from living societies to suggest interpretive
and explanatory approaches to archaeological data.
Settlement Analysis and Site Hierarchy

One of the principal ways of answering the basic question “what is the scale
of the society?” is through an understanding of settlement pattern, and this
can come only from survey. Whatever the period in question, we should be
interested in finding the major center or centers of settlement along with any

smaller sites. We can use many of the survey, sampling, and remote sensing
techniques described in Chapter 3 to do this, but the exact nature of the work
will depend on the society in question—it is much harder to find the scanty
traces that are left by mobile hunter-gatherers than it is to find an ancient city,
so more intensive survey is needed.
Any survey will result in a map and a catalog of the sites discovered,
together with details of each site including size, chronological range (as may
be determined from such surface remains as pottery), architectural features,
and possibly an approximate estimate of population. The aim is then to reach
some classification of the sites on the basis of their relative importance—
a site hierarchy. Possible categories for the different types of site encountered
might include, for instance, regional center, local center, nucleated village,
dispersed village, and hamlet.
Various techniques can be used to establish the site hierarchy of a region,
but the simplest is based solely on site size. Sites are arranged in rank order
by size and then displayed as a histogram (frequency distribution), which
will usually show that the small sites are the most frequent. Such histograms
allow comparisons to be made between the site hierarchies of different
regions, different periods, and different types of society. In band societies, for
example, there will usually be only a narrow range of variation in site size and
Site hierarchy for Early Dynastic settlements
all the sites will be relatively small. State societies, on the other hand, will have
in a region of Mesopotamia. both hamlets and farmsteads, and large towns and cities. The degree to which
a single site is dominant within a settlement system will also
15
15
be evident from this type of analysis, and the organization
of the settlement system will often be a direct reflection of
the organization of the society that created it. In a general
way, the more hierarchical the settlement pattern, the more
hierarchical the society.
Work by Gregory Johnson on the Early Dynastic
10
10
(c. 2800 bce) settlement sites in a region of Mesopotamia
SITES
U M B E R OofF sites
showed this very clearly, as can be seen in the graph to the

left. The sites ranged in size from 25 ha (60 acres) to just over
NNumber
one tenth of a hectare (0.25 acres), and could be divided into

five categories based on their size: Johnson called these large
5 towns, towns, large villages, small villages, and hamlets. The
existence of a settlement hierarchy of this kind has been used
by some archaeologists as an indicator of a state society.
The excavation of settlement remains, however, is the
major source of information about social relations within
a society. This applies for any level of complexity, but the
0
1 55 10
10 15
15 20
20 25
25 methods used can vary greatly, the main distinction being
S E TSettlement
TLEMENT S I Z EinI Nhectares
size HECTARES between mobile and sedentary societies.

Mobile hunter-gatherer societies. In mobile hunter-gatherer societies
organization is exclusively at a local level, with no permanent administrative
centers. So having identified various sites, the first approach is to concentrate
on the sites themselves, with the aim being to understand the nature of the
activities that took place there, and of the social group that used them.
Among mobile communities of hunter-gatherers archaeologists draw a
distinction between cave sites and open sites. Occupation deposits in cave sites
tend to be deep, usually indicating intermittent human activity over thousands
or tens of thousands of years, and meticulous excavation and recording are
required to interpret the stratigraphy of the site accurately. Open sites may
Key Concepts have been occupied for shorter periods of time, but the deposits, without the
Methods of Social protection provided by a cave, may have suffered greater erosion.
Analysis If it proves possible to distinguish single short phases of human
occupation at a hunter-gatherer site, we can then look at the distribution
Settlement Analysis: the main of artifacts and bone fragments within and around features and structures
method of investigating past social (hut foundations, remains of hearths) to see whether any coherent patterns
organization. Data are collected
can be observed. It is not always clear, however, whether the distribution is
by survey and excavation, but the
the result of human activity on the spot (or in situ) or whether the materials
specific methods used can vary
greatly depending on the society have been transported by flowing water and redeposited. In some cases, too,
in question especially with bone debris, distribution may be the result of the action of
predatory animals, not of humans.
Burial Analysis: rank and social
The study of such questions requires sophisticated sampling strategies
status are best revealed by the
and very thorough analysis. The work of Glynn Isaac’s team at the early
analysis of grave-goods within
individual burials Paleolithic site of Koobi Fora on the eastern shore of Lake Turkana, Kenya,
gives an indication of the recovery and analytical techniques involved.
Monuments and Public Works: The excavation procedure was highly controlled, with exact recording of
the scale of monuments and public the coordinates of every piece of bone or stone recovered, and careful analysis
works, as well as their distribution,
of the degree of post-depositional disturbance. Isaac’s team was able to fit
can be a good indicator of social
organization some fragments of bone and stone back together again. The team interpreted
the network of joins (see diagram opposite) as showing areas where
Written Records: an excellent hominins broke open bones to extract marrow, and where stone tools
source of information about the were made—so-called activity areas.
organization of early state societies
For a wider perspective, we need to consider the entire territory in
Ethnoarchaeology: the study which the group or band operated, and the relationship between sites.
of living societies in order to Ethnoarchaeology has helped to establish a framework of analysis, so that
help interpret the past, with a we may think in terms of an annual home range (i.e. the whole territory
specific emphasis on the use covered by the group in the course of a year) and specific types of site within
and significance of artifacts,
it, such as a home base camp (for a particular season), transitory camps,
buildings and structures, and
how these material things might hunting blinds, butchery or kill sites, storage caches, and so on. These
become incorporated into the issues are basic to hunter-gatherer archaeology, and a regional perspective
archaeological record is essential to understand the annual life cycle of the group and its behavior.
This means that, in addition to conventional sites (with a high concentration

N
Bones Stones
Conjoining bones Conjoining stones
0 30 ft.
0 10 m
Glynn Isaac’s research at the early of artifacts), we need to look for sparse scatters of artifacts, consisting
Paleolithic site of Koobi Fora, Kenya.
(Top row) Location of bones and stone
of perhaps just one or two objects in every 10-m survey square. We must
artifacts. (Second row) Lines joining also study the whole regional environment and the likely human use
bones and stones that could be fitted
back together, perhaps indicating
of it by hunter-gatherers.
activity areas. A good example is provided by the work of the British anthropologist
Robert Foley in the Amboseli region of southern Kenya. He collected and
recorded some 8531 stone tools from 257 sample locations within a study
area covering 600 sq. km (232 sq. miles). From this evidence he was able to
calculate the rate of discard of stone tools within different environmental
and vegetation zones, and interpret the distribution patterns in terms of
the strategies and movements of hunter-gatherer groups. In a later study,
he developed a general model of stone tool distribution based on a number
of studies of hunter-gatherer bands in different parts of the world. One
conclusion was that a single band of some 25 people might be expected to
discard as many as 163,000 artifacts within their annual territory in the course
of a single year. These artifacts would be scattered, but with significant

Robert Foley’s model (left) of activities within concentrations at home base camps and temporary camps. According to Foley’s
the annual home range of a hunter-gatherer
band, and the artifact scatters (right)
study, however, only a very small proportion of the artifacts discarded would
resulting from such activities. be found by archaeologists working at a single site, and it is vitally important
that individual site assemblages are interpreted as parts of a broader pattern.
sedentary societies. Investigation of the social organization of sedentary

communities, which include segmentary societies, chiefdoms, and states, is
best approached with an investigation of settlement (although, as we shall
see below, cemeteries and public monuments evident in these societies also
form useful areas of study).
Although much can be learned from survey, for effective analysis of the
community as a whole some structures need to be excavated completely
and the remainder sampled intensively enough to obtain an idea of the
variety of different structures. The careful excavation of individual houses
and of complete villages is standard procedure when dealing with smaller
sedentary communities. This opens the way to the study of households, and
of community structure, as well as to well-founded estimates of population.

Kent Flannery’s excavation of Early Formative houses at Tierras Largas in
Oaxaca, Mexico, offers a useful example. He was able to establish the first map
showing the layout of a Formative village in Oaxaca. Evidence for differences
in social status emerged. Residences, deduced to be of relatively high status,
had not only a house platform built of higher-quality adobe and stone, but
also a greater quantity of animal bone, imported obsidian, and imported
marine shell than the area of wattle-and-daub houses deduced to be of lower
status. Significantly, locally available (and therefore less prestigious) chert
formed a higher proportion of the tools in the lower-status area.
Most of the techniques of analysis appropriate to less developed societies
remain valid for the study of centralized chiefdoms and states, which
incorporate within themselves most of the social forms and patterns of
interaction seen in the simpler societies. Additional techniques are needed
because of the centralization of society, the hierarchy of sites, and the
organizational and communicational devices that characterize chiefdom
and state societies. A wide-ranging example is provided by the work at the
Mississippian site of Spiro, described in the box overleaf.
Plan of a house at Tierras Largas, c. 900 bce,

with certain artifacts plotted in position.

Conspicuous Ranking
at Mississippian Spiro UNITED
STATES
• Spiro
Few sites in North America can basis for a number of archaeological with funerary materials telling far more
match the abundance of finely crafted studies, most notably by James A. complex stories than once believed.
mortuary-related artifacts found at Spiro Brown. His work over forty years has
in eastern Oklahoma, and none of them clarified what went on in the Great Social Organization
has inspired as many ground-breaking Mortuary for well over a century up The first systematic study of the Craig
studies of mortuary behavior and its to the final burial event in the early Mound mortuary materials coincided
relationship to social organization and fifteenth century ce. Interpretations of with the recognition, around 1970,
belief systems. The Mississippian- this remarkable deposit have changed that burial areas provide perspectives
period Spiro site first came to attention as additional data have come to light, on social organization that are
in 1935 when looters discovered a
hollow chamber in the depths of the
Craig Mound filled with human bones
along with elaborate items heaped over
a vast number of shell beads. Among
the extraordinary artifacts were large
engraved marine-shell cups, several
big effigy pipes, wooden masks and
human figures, copper axes, lidded
baskets containing copper plates,
and textiles. Tunneling in, the looters
destroyed many of these items and
(Above) Craig Mound,
their contextual relationships with Spiro.
one another.
(Right) Plan of the N
excavated Great Mortuary,
The Great Mortuary
with the later circular
Subsequent controlled excavations hollow chamber at the
brought a measure of order to the Craig center.
Mound discoveries. They are now
understood to be a collective deposit
of bones and artifacts, referred to as
the Great Mortuary, with a later tomb
for a single individual on top. The cavity
that excited so much initial interest
has recently been interpreted as an
intentional beehive-shaped cavity with
a basal diameter and height each of
about 4.5 m (15 ft.), within which was
found one person accompanied by a
rich array of symbolically significant
and carefully arranged grave-goods. Artifact
concentration
Artifacts removed by the looters, Shell deposit
dispersed to private and public 0 2m

Floor
Overlying fill
collections, along with field notes and 0 5 ft.
materials from later work have been the

difficult to obtain from other kinds of a one-time event as it was cleaned out
archaeological information. At the and reconstituted an unknown number
Great Mortuary, there was variation in of times.
skeletal articulation and completeness,
with a wide array of artifacts, and bones Evidence for Social Change
were scattered across the floor and Field records indicate that impressive
associated with cane baskets and cedar and symbolically significant items,
(Above left) Excavations in the 1930s, with
litters. Differences in how the skeletal including massive pipes and wooden upright cedar post and tunnels/hollows visible.
remains were treated were equated statues, were placed in ritually important
to distinctions in rank. Demonstrating locations within the hollow chamber. (Above) Elaborate cedar mask with
deer antlers.
the existence of such a hierarchy was The overall arrangement of objects is
consistent with what was then a new indicative of cosmological principles were related to one another
interest in using burial contexts to that are as yet incompletely understood. underscores the differences that
reconstruct the social structure of past The much greater attention now existed in the leadership structure
societies, in this instance a “chiefdom.” being focused on the hollow chamber of Mississippian societies, and in
The objects, especially elaborate has clarified its relationship to the Great chiefdoms in general, and how that
engravings on marine-shell cups, Mortuary. It appears that the cavity, structure could change over time even
emphasized several themes, with war located within a dome of hard clay within individual communities.
prominent among them. These images lined by cedar poles, was a tomb built
underscored the centrality of being on top of the Great Mortuary deposit
a successful warrior to the highest- after the latter had been sealed. Within (Below) Soapstone effigy pipe depicting
ranking people. it an individual was richly furnished a warrior executing his victim.
Later the range of skeletal with numerous intact sacred objects.
preservation, the presence of broken It signals a major social change from
items, and soil adhering to bones and shared political leadership, represented
artifacts were recognized as indicating by collective burial, to a more restricted
that much of the Great Mortuary deposit authority structure late in the history of
was formed by materials gathered the Spiro community.
from other places. It is as if the intent Thus, there has been a shift from
was to figuratively and literally create a focus on the social identities of the
a genealogical history by gathering the people interred in the mound to what
remains of important people together. the group responsible for shaping the
Altering ancestral connections to burial area was conveying to a broader
legitimize the positions of high-ranking audience about their place in the
lineages and the most important people physical and supernatural worlds.
within them is not at all uncommon in The recent clarification of how the Great
human societies. The deposit was not Mortuary and the later tomb
Conspicuous Ranking at Mississippian Spiro 155

One of the first steps when looking at a complex society is to identify one
or more primary centers, and this is done by considering the size of a site,
either in absolute terms, or in terms of the distances between major centers,
so as to determine which are dominant and which subordinate. With this
information a map can be created identifying the principal independent
centers and the approximate extent of the territories surrounding them.
The reliance on size alone, however, can be misleading, and it is necessary
to seek other indications of which are the primary centers. The best way is to
try to find out how the society in question viewed itself and its territories.
This might seem an impossible task until one remembers that, for most state
societies at any rate, written records exist. These may name various sites,
identifying their place within the hierarchy. The archaeologist’s task is then
to find those named sites, usually by the discovery of an actual inscription
including the name of the relevant site—one might for example hope to
find such an inscription in any substantial town of the Roman empire.
The decipherment of Maya hieroglyphs in the second half of the twentieth
century has opened up a whole new source of evidence of this sort.
Usually, however, site hierarchy must be deduced by more directly
archaeological means, without relying on the written word. A highest-order
center, such as the capital city of an independent state, can best be identified
from direct indications of central organization, on a scale not exceeded
elsewhere, and comparable with that of other highest-order centers of
equivalent states.
One indication is the existence of an archive (even without understanding
anything of what it says) or of other symbolic indications of centralized
organization. For instance, many controlled economies used seals to make
impressions in clay as indications of ownership, source, or destination.
The finding of a quantity of such materials can indicate organizational activity.
Indeed, the whole practice of literacy and of symbolic expression is so central
to organization that such indications are valuable evidence.
A further indication of central status is the presence of buildings of
standardized form known to be associated with central functions of high
order. Examples of such buildings include palaces, such as those found in
Minoan Crete; buildings of ritual function (since in most early societies
the control of administration and control of religious practice were closely
linked), for example a Maya temple complex; fortifications; and mints for
producing coinage.
In a hierarchically organized society, it always makes sense to study closely
the functions of the center, considering such possible factors as kinship,
bureaucratic organization, redistribution and storage of goods, organization
of ritual, craft specialization, and external trade. All of these offer insights
into how the society worked.

Burial Analysis: The Study of Ranking from Individual Burials
In archaeology, the individual is seen all too rarely. One of the most
informative insights into the individual and his or her social status is offered
by the discovery of human physical remains—the skeleton or the ashes—
accompanied by artifacts deposited in the grave. Examination of the skeletal
remains will often reveal the sex and age at death of each individual, and
possibly any dietary deficiency or other pathological condition (see Chapter 8).
Communal or collective burials (burials of more than one individual) may be
difficult to interpret, because it will not always be clear which grave-goods go
with which deceased person. It is, therefore, from single burials that we can
hope to learn most.
In segmentary societies, and others with relatively limited differentiation
in terms of rank, a close analysis of grave-goods can reveal much about
disparities in social status. It is important to remember, however, that what
is buried with a deceased person is not simply the exact equivalent either
of status or of material goods owned or used during life. Burials are made
by living individuals, and are used by them to express and influence their
relationships with others still alive as much as to symbolize or serve the dead.
But there is nevertheless often a relationship between the role and rank of the
deceased during life and the manner in which the remains are disposed of and
accompanied by artifacts.
The analysis will seek to determine differences between male and female
burials, and to assess whether these differences carry with them distinctions
in terms of wealth or higher status. The other common factor involved with
rank or status is age, and age differences may be systematically reflected in
the treatment of the deceased. In relatively egalitarian societies, high status
won through achievements (e.g. in hunting) in an individual’s own lifetime
is something commonly encountered, and often reflected in funerary practice.
But the archaeologist must ask, from the evidence available, whether such
a burial really reflects status achieved by the individual or instead hereditary
status through birth. To distinguish between the two is not easy. One useful
criterion is to investigate whether children are in some cases given rich burial
goods and other indications of preferential attention. If so, there may have
been a system of hereditary ranking, because at so early an age the child is
unlikely to have reached such a status through personal distinction alone.
Once the graves in the cemetery have been dated, the first step in most
cases is simply to produce a histogram of the number of different artifact
types in each grave. For further analysis, however, it is more interesting to
seek some better indication of wealth and status so that greater weight can be
given to valuable objects, and less weight to commonplace ones. This at once
raises the problem of the recognition of value (for we cannot assume that
past societies had the same ideas of value as we do). One answer might

Khok Phanom Di. be to assume that valuable objects were those that took a long time to make,
(Above left) The dead were buried
or were made of materials brought from a distance or difficult to obtain.
individually, in neat, clustered rows. We must also remember that ranking is not expressed solely in the grave-
(Above right) The Princess, who was
goods, but in the entire manner of burial.
accompanied by a set of shell jewelry, A good example of the analysis of an entire cemetery is offered by the
with more than 120,000 beads,
a headdress, and a bracelet, as well
excavations of Charles Higham and Rachanie Thosarat at the site of Khok
as fine pottery vessels. Phanom Di, a large mound inland from the Gulf of Siam in central Thailand.
The settlement had been occupied for about 500 years from c. 2000 bce, and
left a cemetery containing 154 human burials with bone and shell ornaments
intact. The graves occurred in clusters with spaces between them. A very
detailed burial sequence was worked out that provided insights into the
community’s kinship system over about 20 generations. The ability to trace
families down the generations in this way is extremely rare in prehistory.
In the later phases there was a predominance of women, some of them, such
as the so-called Princess, buried with considerable wealth. Also there was a
clear link between the wealth of children and the adults with whom they were
buried—poor children accompanied poor adults. The analysis of a complete
cemetery in this way can yield many insights that are not available even from
the very careful examination of a single grave.
Monuments and Public Works

Some societies invest a great deal of labor and considerable resources
in the construction of monuments and public works. Such monuments
were generally built with the intention of being conspicuous, and in some

cases—such as the pyramids of Egypt—they remain conspicuous today.
Many early state societies had at their center a major ceremonial site, and the
monuments at such sites are informative not only about the religious beliefs
of the society in question but also about aspects of their social organization.
The great plazas at the ceremonial centers of Mesoamerica are an excellent
example. Monte Albán in Oaxaca, Mexico, became the principal center of the
Zapotec state around 200 bce. Its wonderfully situated central plaza, shown
below, dominated the surrounding areas. From this time on, Monte Albán was
the home of some 10,000 to 20,000 people, and the primary center of Oaxaca.
Its monuments celebrate and reflect the power of the state and the city’s
central authority.
In some segmentary societies the surviving monuments were much
more conspicuous than the settlements. In some cases the settlements are
rarely recovered, while clear traces of the monuments remain. This is the
case for the Neolithic period in the Wessex area of southern England, where
earthen burial mounds, called long barrows, are the most evident trace of
the farmers who lived there from c. 4000 bce. With each cluster of mounds
is associated a larger, circular monument with concentric ditches, termed
a causewayed camp.
Despite the sparse remains of settlements, the analysis of the scale and
distribution of the Wessex monuments does allow the reconstruction of
important aspects of social organization. In the early phase of construction
(c. 4000–3000 bce), the spatial distribution and size of the long barrows
suggests a possible interpretation: lines drawn between them divide the
landscape into many possible territories, which are roughly equivalent in size.
Each monument seems to have been the focal point for social activities and
View south across the central plaza at the burial place of the farming community inhabiting the local territory.
Monte Albán, with the restored ruins
of several temples visible. The site was
A group of 20 people would have needed about 50 working days to construct
founded on a mountain top in 500 bce. a long barrow.

In Neolithic southern England, in the earlier
Windmill Hill
long barrow/causewayed camp phase (near
Avebury
right), clusters of burial mounds establish Silbury Hill
Rybury
a social landscape, each cluster with its
Knap Hill Robin Hood’s Marden
causewayed enclosure. Analysis indicates
Ball
that each mound was the territorial focus
for a small group of farmers. This was a Durrington
Walls
segmentary society, where no one group Whitesheet
Hill Stonehenge
was dominant. In the later phase (far right),
the causewayed enclosures were replaced
by major henge monuments (see key,
Hambledon
p. 161). Their scale indicates centralized Hill
organization, and hence perhaps a Knowlton
chiefdom society. At this time the two great
monuments at Stonehenge and Silbury Hill Mount
Maiden
were built. Castle
Pleasant
10 miles 10 miles
English Channel 20 km English Channel 20 km
(Above) West Kennet long barrow is one In this early phase there is little suggestion of the ranking of sites or
of the largest known monuments of its type.
individuals: this was an egalitarian society. The causewayed enclosures
may have served as a periodic meeting place for the larger group of people
represented by one whole cluster of long barrows. (The 100,000 hours’ labor
required to construct one could be achieved in forty working days by 250
people.) This would have been a segmentary, or tribal, society.
In the later phase (c. 3000–2000 bce), the long barrows and causewayed
camps went out of use. In place of the latter, major ritual enclosures are
seen. These were large circular monuments delimited by a ditch with a
bank usually outside it: they are termed henges. Each would have required
something in the order of 1 million hours of labor for its construction. The
labor input suggests the mobilization of the resources of a whole territory.
About 300 people working full time for at least a year would be needed: their
food would have to be provided for them unless the process was spread over
a very long period. At this time (c. 2800 bce) the great earth mound at Silbury
Hill was built. According to its excavator, it required 18 million hours of
work, and was completed within two years. A few centuries later (c. 2500 bce)
the great monument at Stonehenge took final shape, with its circle of stones,

representing an even greater labor investment—30 million hours
if the transport of the stones is taken into account, amounting to a massive
corporate endeavor. Although such labor calculations are very approximate
they do show how some notion of the changing social organization can be
formed through the study of the monuments, even at a time when the traces
of domestic life are scanty.
The structures built at this early time can be very impressive. Stonehenge
is certainly one of the largest, but it is not the oldest. Indeed over much of
northwestern Europe there are stone monuments of the Neolithic period,
mainly collective tombs, which are often termed “megalithic” (from the
Greek megas (great) and lithos (stone)). Some of these go back as far as
4000 bce, a millennium before the pyramids of Egypt. In the Orkney Islands,
beyond the northern tip of Scotland, the local sandstone could readily be
worked, even before the use of metal tools, and the surviving monuments,
some of them well preserved, are sophisticated works of stone architecture.
(Right) Analysis of the scale of the Wessex For instance, in the chambered tomb at Quanterness, dating to c. 3300 bce,
monuments in terms of labor hours remains of a large number of individuals were found, perhaps as many
needed for their construction suggests the
emergence of a hierarchy in the later phase
that may mirror a development in social
relations and the emergence of a ranked APPROX. WORK HOURS REQUIRED FOR CONSTRUCTION KEY
society. Stonehenge, built at this time, is the Late Neolithic
greatest of the Wessex monuments. In the Stonehenge
STONEHENGE
earlier Neolithic the scale of monuments 30,000,000 Henge
is commensurate with an egalitarian,
HENGE
segmentary society. 1,000,000 Causewayed camp
Early Neolithic Long barrow

(Below) Stonehenge, formed of huge sarsen
CAUSEWAYED CAMP
stones and smaller bluestones, and the
100,000
greatest of the Wessex monuments, had
largely reached its current form by around LONG BARROW
10,000
2500 bce.

as 390. Males and females were about equally represented, and the age
distribution could represent the pattern of deaths in the population at
large; that is to say, that the age at death of the people buried in the tomb
(46 percent below twenty years, 47 percent aged twenty–thirty years, and
only 7 percent over the age of thirty years) could in proportional terms be
the same as that of the whole population. The excavators concluded that
this was a tomb equally available to most sectors of the community, and
representative of a segmentary society rather than a hierarchical one,
which the sophistication of its architecture might at first have suggested.
Written Records
For literate societies—those that use writing, for instance all the great
civilizations in Mesoamerica, China, Egypt, and the Near East—historical
records can answer many of the social questions set out at the beginning
of this chapter. One of the main goals of the archaeologist dealing with these
societies is therefore to find appropriate texts. Many of the early excavations
at the great sites of the Near East, for example, concentrated on the recovery
of archives of clay writing tablets. Major finds of this kind are still made
Some of the 5000 clay tablets discovered
today—for example, at the ancient city of Ebla (Tell Mardikh) in Syria in
in the royal palace at Ebla (Tell Mardikh) the 1970s, where an archive of 5000 clay tablets written in an early, probably
in modern Syria, dating from the late third
millennium bce. The tablets formed part of
provincial, dialect of Akkadian (Babylonian) was discovered.
the state archives, recording more than 140 In each early literate society, writing had its own functions and purposes.
years of Ebla’s history. Originally they were
stored on wooden shelving, which collapsed
For instance, the clay tablets of Mycenaean Greece, dating from c. 1200 bce,
when the palace was sacked. are almost without exception records of commercial transactions at the
Mycenaean palaces. This gives us an impression of many aspects of the
Mycenaean economy, and a glimpse into craft organization (through the
names for the different kinds of craftspeople), as well as introducing
the names of the offices of state. But here, as in other cases, accidents of
preservation may be important. It could be that the Mycenaeans wrote on
clay only for their commercial records, and used other, perishable materials for
literary or historical texts now lost to us. It is certainly true that for the Classical
Greek and Roman civilizations, it is mainly official decrees inscribed on
marble that have survived. Fragile rolls of papyrus—the predecessor of modern
paper—with literary texts on them, have usually only remained intact in the
dry air of Egypt, or, for example, buried in the volcanic ash covering Pompeii.
Coinage is also an important written source. The findspots of coins give
interesting economic evidence about trade. But the inscriptions themselves
are informative about the issuing authority—whether city-state (as in ancient
Greece) or sole ruler (as in imperial Rome, or the kings of medieval Europe).
The decipherment of an ancient language transforms our knowledge of the
society that used it. In recent times one of the most significant advances has
been the decipherment of Maya glyphs. It had been widely assumed that Maya

The Inca had no writing system as inscriptions were exclusively of a calendrical nature, or that they dealt with
such, but kept records of accounts
and other transactions using knotted
purely religious matters, notably the deeds of deities. But the inscriptions can
ropes called quipu. now in many cases be interpreted as relating to real historical events, mainly
the deeds of the Maya kings. We can also now begin to deduce the likely
territories belonging to individual Maya centers. Maya history has thus taken
on a new dimension.
A more detailed example of the value of written sources for reconstructing
social archaeology is Mesopotamia, where a huge number of records of Sumer
and Babylon (c. 3000–1600 bce), mainly in the form of clay tablets, have been
preserved. The uses of writing in Mesopotamia may be summarized as follows:
Recording information • Administrative purposes

for future use • Codification of law
• Formulation of a sacred tradition
• Annals
• Scholarly purposes
Communicating current • Letters

information • Royal edicts
• Public announcements
• Texts for training scribes
Communicating with • Sacred texts, amulets, etc.

the gods

(Right) Akkadian cylinder seal of c. 2400 bce
and its rollout impression, showing armed
men, possibly hunters. The inscription,
written, similarly to Hammurabi’s law code
(below), in the cuneiform script, reveals that
the owner of the seal was Kalki, a servant of
Ubilishtar, the brother of the king (who is not
named, but was probably Sargon of Akkad).
Such seals were used to mark ownership
or authenticity. Many thousands have been
recovered from Mesopotamian sites.
(Below) The famous law code of the Perhaps most evocative of all are the law codes, of which the most impressive
Babylonian king Hammurabi, c. 1750 bce.
example is the law code of Hammurabi of Babylon, written in the Akkadian
language (and in cuneiform script) around 1750 bce. The ruler is seen at the
top of the stone, standing before Shamash, the god of justice. The laws were
promulgated, as Hammurabi states, “so that the strong may not oppress
the weak, and to protect the rights of the orphan and widow.” These laws
cover many aspects of life—agriculture, business transactions, family law,
inheritance, terms of employment for different craftspeople, and penalties
for such crimes as adultery and homicide.
Impressive and informative as it is, Hammurabi’s law code is not
straightforward to interpret, and emphasizes the need for the archaeologist
to reconstruct the full social context that led to the drafting of a text. As the
British scholar Nicholas Postgate has pointed out, the code is by no means
complete, and seems to cover only those areas of the law that had proved
troublesome. Moreover, Hammurabi had recently conquered several rival
city states, and the law code was therefore probably designed to help integrate
the new territories into his empire.
Ethnoarchaeology
Ethnoarchaeology is a fundamental method of approach for the social
archaeologist. It involves the study of both the present-day use and
significance of artifacts, buildings, and structures within living societies, and
the way these material things become incorporated into the archaeological
record—what happens to them when they are thrown away or (in the case of
buildings and structures) torn down or abandoned. It is therefore an indirect
approach to the understanding of any past society.
There is nothing new in the idea of looking at living societies to help
interpret the past. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries European
archaeologists frequently turned for inspiration to researches done by
ethnographers among societies in Africa or Australia. But the so-called
“ethnographic parallels” that resulted often simply and crudely likened

past societies to present ones, stifling new thought rather than promoting it.
In the United States archaeologists were confronted from the beginning with
the living reality of complex Native American societies, which taught them
to think rather more deeply about how ethnography might be used to aid
archaeological interpretation. Nevertheless, full-fledged ethnoarchaeology is
a development really of only the last forty years. The key difference is that now
it is archaeologists themselves, rather than ethnographers or anthropologists,
who carry out the research among living societies.
A good example is the work of Lewis Binford among the Nunamiut,
a hunter-gatherer group of Alaska. In the 1960s Binford was attempting
to interpret archaeological sites of the Middle Paleolithic in France (the
Mousterian period, 180,000–40,000 years ago). He realized that only by
studying how modern hunter-gatherers used and discarded bones and tools,
or moved from site to site, could he begin to understand the mechanisms
that had created the Mousterian archaeological record—itself almost certainly
the product of a mobile hunter-gatherer economy. Between 1969 and 1973
he lived intermittently among the Nunamiut and observed their behavior.
For instance, he studied the way bone debris was produced and discarded
by men at a seasonal hunting camp (the Mask site, Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska).
He saw that, when sitting round a hearth and processing bone for marrow,
there was a “drop zone” where small fragments of bone fell as they were
In the Lake Baringo area of Kenya, Ian
Hodder studied the female ear decorations
broken. The larger pieces, which were thrown away by the men, formed a
worn by the Tugen, Njemps, and Pokot “toss zone,” both in front and behind them (see illustration overleaf).
(shown here) tribes, and showed how
these ornaments were used to assert
The Nunamiut might not provide an exact ethnographic parallel for
tribal distinctiveness. Mousterian societies, but Binford recognized that there are certain actions or
functions likely to be common to all hunter-gatherers because—as in the case
of the processing of bone—the actions are dictated by the most convenient
procedure when seated round a camp fire. The discarded fragments of bone
then leave a characteristic pattern round the hearth for the archaeologist to find
and interpret—indeed, Binford went on to use his model to reinterpret data
from a Paleolithic camp site. From such analysis, it also proved possible to infer
roughly how many people were in the group, and over what period of time the
camp site was used. These are questions very relevant to our understanding
of the social organization (including the size) of hunter-gatherer groups.
Ethnoarchaeology is not restricted to observations at the local scale. The
British archaeologist Ian Hodder, in his study of the female ear decorations
used by different tribes in the Lake Baringo area of Kenya, undertook a regional
study to investigate the extent to which material culture (in this case personal
decoration) was being used to express differences between the tribes. Partly
as a result of such work, archaeologists no longer assume that it is an easy task
to take archaeological assemblages and group them into regional “cultures,”
and then to assume that each “culture” so formed represents a social unit.

Ethnoarchaeology: the work of Lewis
Binford. (Right) The “drop zone” and “toss
zones” model derived from observations
of the Nunamiut. (Center) At the site of
Pincevent, France, the excavator André
Leroi-Gourhan interpreted three hearths
as being evidence for a complex skin tent
(plan and reconstruction shown). (Below left)
Binford applied his “outside hearth model”
to the three Pincevent hearths, and deduced
from the distribution of bones that his model
fitted the evidence better than that of Leroi-
Gourhan: i.e. that the hearths lay outside,
and not within a tent. (Below right) Classic
semicircular arrangement around an outside
hearth, as demonstrated by G/wi people
at Ghanzi, Botswana, in the 1980s.

Such a procedure might, in fact, work quite well for the ear decorations Hodder
studied, because the people in question chose to use this feature to assert
their tribal distinctiveness. But, as Hodder showed, if we were to take other
features of the material culture, such as pots or tools, the same pattern would
not necessarily be followed. His example documents the important lesson that
material culture cannot be used by the archaeologist in a simple or unthinking
manner in the reconstruction of supposed ethnic groups.
The Archaeology of the Individual and of Identity

The discussion so far in this chapter has as its starting point the concept of
the society and its organization. This is a deliberate feature of the structure
of this book: before questions are asked about the variety of human
experience it is necessary first to form some view about the scale of a society
and its complexity. But at the same time this might be criticized as a top-down
approach, beginning with questions of organization and of hierarchy, of power
and of centralization, and only then turning to the individual who actually
lives in society, to that person’s role, gender, and status, and to what it was
really like to live there at that time and in that social context.
It would be equally valid to start with the individual and with social
relationships, including kinship relations, and to work outward from there:
what one might term a bottom-up approach. This involves the consideration
of such issues as social inequality, ethnicity, and gender.
One important aspect of the individual to remember is that most sides
of our humanness and many of the concepts that we enshrine as human,
including our schemes of perception, thought, gender, and sense of morals,
our ways of moving our bodies around and communicating (such as standing,
sitting, looking, speaking, and walking), and even the way we respond to our
senses (such as our sense of smell and taste), are not natural “givens” but are
in fact culturally specific: they are developed and adopted by humans within
a society and vary through time and space. If we are really to know what it
was like to live in a past society, we must be careful not to make assumptions
based on our own experience of what it is to be human.
Social Inequality
The theme of the archaeology of social inequality has perhaps not been very
comprehensively addressed yet, but in the field of historical archaeology there
have been systematic studies of the material culture of some underprivileged
groups, including some interesting studies of town areas known from
documentary accounts to be considered poor.
The infamous Five Points slum area of Lower Manhattan, New York,
described by early nineteenth-century writers including Charles Dickens,
has been investigated through salvage excavations at the site of a new federal
The Archaeology of the Individual and of Identity 167

A view of the rescue excavation of the
nineteenth-century slum area of Five Points
in lower Manhattan, New York (right).
The cellar of a brothel was investigated
and yielded much information concerning
the daily lives of the inhabitants. While of
a low social rank, the prostitutes enjoyed
the use of Chinese porcelain (above).
courthouse at Foley Square. The excavated area included the site of a cellar
brothel at 12 Baxter Street, historically documented (in the 1843 indictment
of its keeper) as a “disorderly house—a nest for prostitutes and others of ill
fame and name, where great numbers of characters are in the nightly practice
Key Concepts
of reveling until late and improper hours of the night.” The excavations
Finding the Individual
revealed insights based upon the material culture:
Many aspects of individual human
behavior are not a cross-cultural The quality of the household goods found in the privy behind 12
“given” but are learned, and differ Baxter [Street] far exceeded that of goods found anywhere else on the
widely across both ancient and block. The prostitutes lived well, at least when they were at work. One
modern cultures attraction was the opportunity to live in a style that seamstresses,
laundresses, and maids could not afford. Afternoon tea at the brothel
The existence of ethnic groups
is difficult to recognize from the was served on a set of Chinese porcelain that included matching
archaeological record: an affiliation teacups and coffee cups, saucers and plates, a slop bowl and a tea
to a particular style of material caddie. Meals consisted of steak, veal, ham, soft-shell clams, and many
culture, for example, does not kinds of fish. There was a greater variety of artifacts from the brothel
necessarily equate to ethnicity
than from other excavated areas of the courthouse block.
It is important to recognize
gender in the archaeological Not far from Foley Square another excavation, that of the African Burial
record (particularly the roles of Ground, formerly known as the Negros Burial Ground, which was recorded on
women, which have traditionally a plan of 1755, has proved highly informative and has had wide repercussions.
been overlooked). There is also a
The rescue excavation of skeletons there in 1991 provoked outrage in
distinction between sex and gender:
sex is biologically determined, the African-American community of today, which felt it had not been
whereas gender roles in different adequately consulted, and ultimately led to the establishment of a Museum
societies vary greatly of African and African-American History in New York City. There were no
grave markers, and other than wood, coffin nails, and shroud pins, few

A Yoruba priestess and a Khamite priest
perform a libation ceremony over the grave
of a person buried in the African Burial
Ground in Lower Manhattan, New York.
artifacts were found. Studies of the skeletons have combined DNA analysis
with cranial metrics, morphology, and historical data, to discover where the
people came from. The large size of the sample will allow study of nutrition
and pathology. The remains of 419 individuals disinterred during the
excavations were ceremonially reburied in October 2003, after being taken
in a procession up Broadway.
Certainly the controversy and the excavation have proved a stimulus toward
the development of African-American archaeology, already well-defined
through the investigation of plantation sites.
Ethnicity and Conflict

Ethnicity (i.e. the existence of ethnic groups) is difficult to recognize from
the archaeological record. For example, the idea that such features as pottery
decoration are automatically a sign of ethnic affiliation has been questioned.
This is a field where ethnoarchaeology is only now beginning to make progress.
The theme of ethnicity is a difficult one to approach archaeologically,
unless with the help of written records, since ethnicity is based largely upon
self-awareness. There is frequently a correlation between ethnic groups and
language groups, which can offer further avenues for study. Questions of
group self-identity, which is often much the same as ethnicity, often underlie
conflict and warfare.
The role of warfare in early societies is one topic that merits further
investigation. It has long been agreed that warfare is a recurrent feature of
early state societies, but for prehistoric times it has been more common to
think in terms of peace-loving “noble savages.” There is, however, an increasing
amount of evidence to suggest that warfare in prehistory was not so much the

Skeletons found in a pit at Talheim, Germany,
dating to c. 5000 bce, indicative of mass
killing, contradict the notion of a peaceful
early farming society (left to right, males,
females, and children).
exception as the norm. A good example is provided by the Neolithic ditched

enclosures (c. 5000 to 2000 bce) of Talheim, Germany. Fieldwork suggested that
they were not simply of symbolic significance, as many archaeologists had
thought, but genuine fortifications. One pit contained the bodies of eighteen
adults and sixteen children, all killed by blows from at least six different axes,
contradicting the notion of a peaceful early farming society.
War need not be undertaken with the objective of permanently occupying
the lands of the vanquished in a process of territorial expansion. The
American archaeologist David Freidel made this point in his study of Maya
warfare, based on the wall paintings at the site of Bonampak and also early
written sources. According to his analysis, the function of Maya warfare was
not to conquer, and thus enlarge the frontiers of the state in question, but
instead to give Maya rulers the opportunity to capture kings and princes from
neighboring states, many of whom were then later offered as sacrifices to the
gods. Warfare thus allowed the Maya rulers to reaffirm their royal status: it had
a central role in upholding the system of government, but that role was not
one of territorial expansion.
Investigating Gender
An important aspect of the study of social archaeology is the investigation
of gender. Initially this was felt to overlap with feminist archaeology, which
often had the explicit objective of exposing and correcting the male bias
(androcentrism) of archaeology. There is no doubt that in the modern world
the role of women professionals, including archaeologists, has often been
a difficult one. For instance, Dorothy Garrod, the first female professor of
archaeology in Britain, was appointed in 1937, at a time when women at her
university (Cambridge) were not allowed to take a degree at the end of their
course, as male undergraduates did, but only a diploma. There was—and still

is—an imbalance to be rectified in the academic world, and that was one of the
early objectives of feminist archaeology. A second was to illuminate the roles
of women in the past more clearly, where frequently they had been overlooked.
But the study of gender is much more than simply the study of women.
An important central idea soon became the distinction between sex
and gender. It was argued that sex—female or male—may be regarded as
biologically determined and can be established archaeologically from skeletal
remains. But gender—at its simplest woman or man—is a social construct,
involving the sex-related roles of individuals in society. Gender roles in
different societies vary greatly both from place to place and through time.
Systems of kinship, of marriage, inheritance, and the division of labor are
all related to biological sex but not determined by it. These perspectives
permitted a good deal of profitable work in this second phase of gender
studies in archaeology, but in turn were criticized by third-wave feminists,
as emphasizing supposedly inherent differences between women and men,
and emphasizing women’s links to the natural world through reproduction.
The work of Marija Gimbutas on the prehistory of southeastern Europe,
for example, is now criticized. She argued that the predominantly female
figurines seen in the Neolithic and Copper Age of southeastern Europe and
in Anatolia demonstrate the important status of women at that time. She
had a vision of an Old Europe influenced by feminine values, which was to
disappear in the succeeding Bronze Age with the dominance of a warlike
male hierarchy, supposedly introduced by Indo-European warrior nomads
from the east.
Different images symbolizing female power?

(Top) A Neolithic vase from Romania;
(above) a Zapotec figurine from Oaxaca,
Mexico; and (right) a late Neolithic seated
stone figure from Hagar Qim, Malta,
originally with a removable head that could
be manipulated with strings.

Marija Gimbutas became something of a cult figure in her own right,
and her support for the concept of a great Mother Goddess representing a
fertility principle has been embraced by modern “ecofeminist” and New Age
enthusiasts. The current excavations by Ian Hodder at the early Neolithic
site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey, where female figurines of baked clay have been
found, are now visited regularly by devotees of the Goddess whose views are
treated respectfully by the excavators, even though they do not share them.
Hodder has argued instead that the figurines may represent the subordination
of women as objects of ownership and male desires. Comparable figurines
from the Aegean can often be shown to lack definite features diagnostic of
sex or gender, and studies of rather similar baked clay figurines from Oaxaca,
Mexico, have suggested that they were made by women for use in rituals
relating to ancestors rather than deities. The notion that they represented
a Mother Goddess lacks supporting evidence.
The third phase in the development of gender archaeology, in tune with
the third wave of feminists of the 1990s, takes a different view of gender in
two senses. First, in the narrower sense, and, as Lynn Meskell puts it, “led
by women of color, lesbian feminists, queer theorists and postcolonial
feminists,” it recognizes that the field of gender and gender difference is more
complex than a simple polarity between male and female, and that other
kinds of difference have to be recognized. Indeed the very recognition of a
simple structural opposition between male and female is itself, even in our
own society, an oversimplification. In many societies children are not regarded
as socially male or female until they reach the age of puberty—in the modern
Greek language, for instance, while men and women are grammatically male
and female in gender, the words for children generally belong to the third,
neuter gender.
This leads on to the second point, that gender is part of a broader social
framework, part of the social process—in Margaret Conkey’s words, “a way in
which social categories, roles, ideologies, and practices are defined and played
out.” While gender is, in any society, a system of classification, it is part of a
larger system of social differences, including age, wealth, religion, ethnicity,
and so forth. Moreover these are not static constructs but fluid and flexible,
constructed and reconstructed in the practice of daily life.
The complexities in analyzing burial data with respect to gender are
indicated by the study by Bettina Arnold of the so-called Princess of Vix burial
from east-central France. The grave contained skeletal remains that analysis
indicated were female, but included various prestige goods normally thought
to be indicative of males. This exceptionally rich fifth-century bce burial
was initially interpreted as a transvestite priest because it was considered
inconceivable that a woman could be honored in such a way. Arnold’s careful
reanalysis of the grave-goods supported the interpretation of the burial as an

(Above left) Reconstruction of part of the elite female. This may lead to a fresh assessment of the potentially powerful,
Princess of Vix burial. A woman's body
adorned with jewelry lay on a cart, the
occasionally paramount role that women played in Iron Age Europe. But this
wheels of which had been stacked against work may yet lead on to a wider consideration of gender distinctions in the
the wall of a timber chamber.
Iron Age in a context that may reassess whether in individuals of very high
(Above right) This huge bronze krater, 1.64 m status the traditional bipolar concept of gender is appropriate.
(5 ft. 4 in.) high, was among the grave-goods.
Study Questions
1 Societies are typically classified into what four main groups?

2 Why is the analysis of burials important to the study of segmentary
societies?
3 How can the ethnoarchaeology of modern societies inform us about
the past?
4 What are the key methods through which the structure of societies
is analyzed?
5 Why is it hard to study ethnicity in the archaeological record?
6 What is the difference between sex and gender? Why is this difference
important to archaeologists?

Summary
a forMidable battery of techniques is available to archaeologists who wish to
investigate the social organization of early societies. The potential for understanding
the more complex and highly organized societies represented by states and
chiefdoms is especially great.
We can investigate ranked societies through their site hierarchies and, in the
case of state societies, through their urban centers. It should in this way be possible
to identify the ruling center, and the extent of the area over which it held jurisdiction,
using archaeological methods alone.
for ranked or stratified societies (chiefdoms and states), the study

of buildings and other evidence of administration at the center gives valuable
information about social, political, and economic organization, as well as a picture of
the life of the ruling elite. We can identify and analyze palaces and tombs, and studies
of lower-order administrative centers give further information. Differences in the
treatment accorded to different individuals at death, in both the size and wealth of
grave offerings, can reveal the complete range of status distinctions in a society.
siMilar approaches may be applied to segmentary societies, through the study

of individual settlements, social ranking revealed by burials, and cooperative
communal mechanisms for the construction of major monuments.
on a sMaller scale (and particularly important for the Paleolithic period), the
camps of mobile hunter-gatherer societies and the seasonal movement between
different sites may also be studied using the methods outlined in this chapter,
especially when the insights provided by ethnoarchaeological research on living
societies are used in conjunction with direct study of the archaeological record.
in recent studies a bottom-up perspective in social archaeologies has become

important: the archaeology of individuals and of identity. Gender studies in particular
are now adding new insight into the structure of society.
Further Reading
The following works illustrate some of Janusek, J. W. 2004. Identity and Power
the ways in which social organization in the Ancient Andes. Routledge:
can be reconstructed: London & New York.
Meskell, L. 2006. A Companion to Social
Binford, L. R. 2002. In Pursuit of the Archaeology. Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford.
Past. University of California Press: Pyburn, K. A. (ed.). 2004. Ungendering
Berkeley & London. Civilization. Routledge: London &
Hodder, I. 2009. Symbols in Action. New York.
Cambridge University Press:
Cambridge & New York. [See p. 345 for a list of useful websites]

6
What Was the
Environment and
What Did They Eat?
Environment, Subsistence, and Diet
Investigating Environments on Investigating Diet, Seasonality,

a Global Scale 177 and Domestication from Animal
Evidence from Water and Ice 177 Remains 197
❑ Sea and Ice Cores and Global Strategies of Use: Deducing Age,
Warming 178 Sex, and Seasonality from Large
Tree-rings and Climate 179 Fauna 199
❑ Bison-drive Sites 200
Reconstructing the Plant The Question of Animal

Environment 180 Domestication 201
Microbotanical Remains 181 Remains of Individual Meals 202
❑ Pollen Analysis 182
Macrobotanical Remains 184 Assessing Diet from Human

Remains 202
Reconstructing the Animal Individual Meals 203
Environment 186 Human Teeth as Evidence
Microfauna 187 for Diet 204
Macrofauna 188 Isotopic Methods: Diet over
a Lifetime 205
Subsistence and Diet 189
Study Questions 206
What Can Plant Foods Tell Us Summary 207
about Diet? 191 Further Reading 207
Macrobotanical Remains 191
Analysis of Plant Residues
on Artifacts 193
The Domestication of Wild
Plant Species 195
Plant Evidence from Literate
Societies 195
Environment and diet constitute two of the most fundamental and crucial
factors of human life that the archaeologist needs to assess. The environment
governs human life: latitude, altitude, landforms, and climate determine the
vegetation, which in turn determines animal life, and both of these determine
diet. And all these things taken together determine how and where humans
have lived—or at least they did until very recently.
The reconstruction of the environment first requires an answer to very
general questions of global climate change. What was the global climate like
when the human activities under study took place? Does a context belong
to a glacial or interglacial phase? These broad questions can be answered by
relating the date of a context to evidence of long-term climatic fluctuations
obtained from sea and ice cores, as well as from tree-rings.
More specific questions about past environments will follow, and these
are particularly relevant for all postglacial contexts, after about 10,000 years
ago. There are two main sources of evidence: plant and animal remains.
Analysis of these will not only reveal the range of flora and fauna that people
would have encountered at a particular time and place, but since many plants
and animals are quite sensitive to climate change, we can also find out what
the regional and local environment would have been like.
Unfortunately, owing to the poor preservation of many forms of organic
evidence, and to the distorted samples we recover, we can never be certain
about our conclusions. We simply have to aim for the best approximation
available. No single method will give a full and accurate picture—all are
problematic in one way or another—and so as many methods as data and
funds will allow need to be applied to build up a composite image.
Once we know what the environment might have been like, as well
as the kinds of plants and animals present, we can try to find out how
people exploited those conditions and resources, and what they might
have been eating. Subsistence, the quest for food, is one of the most basic
of all necessities, and there is a variety of evidence for it to be found in the
176 6 • What Was the Environment and What Did They Eat?
archaeological record. Plant and animal remains and the residues found on
artifacts, such as pots or stone tools, can give indirect clues to diet, but the
only direct evidence we have is from the study of actual human remains:
stomach contents, fecal material, teeth, and bones.
Investigating Environments on a Global Scale

The first step in assessing previous environmental conditions is to look
at them globally. Local changes make little sense unless seen against this
broader climatic background. Tree-rings are a good source of information for
the last 10,000 years or so, but since water covers almost three-quarters of the
Earth, we should begin by examining evidence about past climates that can
be obtained from this area, including data within glaciers and ice caps. We will
then go on to look at what can be learned about past environments at a more
local level, from plant and animal remains.
Evidence from Water and Ice

The sediments of the ocean floor accumulate very slowly, just a few
centimeters every thousand years, but they can contain evidence of thousands
or even millions of years of climate history. In some areas ocean sediments
consist primarily of an ooze made up of microfossils, such as the shells of
foraminifera—tiny one-celled marine organisms that live in the surface water
of the oceans and sink to the bottom when they die. As in an archaeological
stratigraphy, we can trace changes in environmental conditions through time
by studying cores extracted from the seabed and fluctuations in the species
represented and the physical form of single species through the sequence.
Oxygen isotope analysis of foraminifera can also reveal changes in the
environment (see box overleaf).
Thousands of deep-sea cores have now been extracted and studied,
but cores can also be obtained from stratified ice sheets (some containing
hundreds of thousands of annual growth layers), and here the oxygen
isotopic composition also gives some guide to climatic oscillations. Results
from cores in Greenland and the Antarctic, as well as Andean and Tibetan
glaciers, are consistent with, and add detail to, those from deep-sea cores.
It is also possible to analyze bubbles of ancient methane gas trapped in the
ice (resulting from plant decomposition, which is sensitive to temperature
and moisture variations).
Ancient Winds. Isotopes can be used not merely for temperature studies
but also for data on precipitation. And since it is the temperature differences
between the equatorial and polar regions that largely determine the
storminess of our weather, isotope studies can even tell us something
about winds in different periods.
Investigating Environments on a Global Scale 177

Sea and Ice Cores
and Global Warming
The stratigraphy of sediment on the which certain foraminiferan species Microscopic fossils of the foraminiferan species
ocean floor is obtained from cores lived. At the same time the proportion Globorotalia truncatulinoides, which coils to the
left during cold periods, and to the right during
taken out of the seabed. Ships use a of oxygen-18 in seawater increased.
warm ones.
“piston corer” to extract a thin column When the glaciers melted during
of sediment, usually about 10–30 m periods of warmer climate, the
(30–100 ft.) in length. The core can proportion of oxygen-18 decreased.
then be analyzed in the laboratory. Cores can also be extracted from activity, and the ice shows that today’s
Dates for the different layers in the present-day ice sheets in Greenland greenhouse gas concentrations in the
core are obtained by radiocarbon, and Antarctica. Here too, variations atmosphere are the highest for at least
archaeomagnetism, or the uranium- in oxygen and also hydrogen isotopic 440,000 years. In the cores, even much
series method (see Chapter 4). composition at different depths reveal smaller rises in the gas level have been
Changing environmental conditions the temperature when the ice formed, followed by significant rises in global
in the past are then deduced by two and thus provide an indication of past temperatures, but the current rate of
kinds of tests on microscopic fossils climate; results coincide well with increase in greenhouse gases is more
of tiny one-celled organisms, called those from deep-sea cores. In addition, than 100 times faster than anything
foraminifera, found in the sediment. high carbon and methane levels (the recorded in the last half a million years.
First, scientists study the simple so-called greenhouse gases) indicate During that period, levels of carbon
presence, absence, and fluctuations of periods of global warming. dioxide varied between 200 parts per
different foraminiferan species. Second, The ice cores suggest that the next million (ppm) in ice ages, and 280 ppm
they analyze, by mass spectrometer, ice age is about 15,000 years away; in interglacials—but since the industrial
fluctuations in the ratio of the stable however, the stability of our climate revolution, the levels have risen to
oxygen isotopes, oxygen-18 and has been overturned by human 375 ppm, which alarms scientists.
oxygen-16, in the calcium carbonate
of the foraminiferan shells. Variations
discernible by these two tests reflect 1 Foraminifera species 2 Foraminifera 18O/16O 3 Ice cap 18O/16O ratio
(North Atlantic core ratio (Caribbean core (Greenland Camp
not simply changes in temperature, V 23-82) P 6304-9) Century core)
but also oscillations in the continental
glaciers. For example, as the glaciers
15,000
grew, water was drawn up into them,
reducing sea levels and increasing the 30,000
density and salinity of the oceans, and
YEARS BEFORE THE PRESENT (bp)
thus causing changes in the depths at 45,000
60,000
75,000
90,000
105,000
Three climate records compared. Left to right:
proportions of different shell species in a deep- 120,000
sea core; ratio of oxygen-18 to oxygen-16 in
shells from a deep-sea core; and oxygen ratios 135,000
from an ice core. The resemblance of the three
records is good evidence that long-term climatic WARMER WARMER WARMER
variation has been worldwide.
As air moves from low latitudes to colder regions, the water it loses as
rain or snow is enriched in the stable isotope oxygen-18, while the remaining
vapor becomes correspondingly richer in the other stable isotope of oxygen,
oxygen-16. Thus from the ratio between the two isotopes in precipitation at
a particular place, we can calculate the temperature difference between that
place and the equatorial region.
Using this technique, the changing ratios found over the last 100,000 years
in ice cores from Greenland and the Antarctic have been studied.
The results show that during glacial periods the temperature difference
between equatorial and polar regions increased by 20–25 percent, and thus
wind circulation must have been far more violent. Confirmation has come
from a deep-sea core off the coast of West Africa, analysis of which led to
estimates of wind strength over the last 700,000 years. Apparently wind “vigor”
was greater by a factor of two during each glacial episode than at the present;
and wind speeds were 50 percent greater during glacial than interglacial
phases. In future, analysis of the minute plant debris in these cores may
also add to the history of wind patterns.
It has also been found that raindrops in hurricanes have more oxygen-16
than normal rain, and this leaves traces in layers of stalagmites—for example
in caves in Belize—as well as in tree-rings. This method has pinpointed
hurricane events of the past 200 years, and so it should also be possible to use
older stalagmites to establish a record of hurricanes stretching back tens of
thousands of years, thus revealing any changes in their patterns, locations,
and intensity. So data from the past may clarify the possible linkage of modern
global warming with such extreme weather.
Why should archaeologists be interested in ancient winds? The answer
is that winds can have a great impact on human activity. For example, it is
thought that increased storminess may have caused the Vikings to abandon
their North Atlantic sea route at the onset of a cold period. Similarly, some of
the great Polynesian migrations in the southwestern Pacific during the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries ce seem to have coincided with the onset of a short
period of slightly warmer weather, when violent storms would have been rare.
These migrations were brought to an end a few centuries later by the Little Ice
Age, which may have caused a sharp increase in the frequency of storms. Had
the Polynesians been able to continue, they might conceivably have gone on
from New Zealand to reach Tasmania and Australia.
Tree-rings and Climate

Tree-rings have a growth that varies with the climate, being strong in the
spring and then declining to nothing in the winter; the more moisture
available, the wider the annual ring. As we saw in Chapter 4, these variations
in ring width have formed the basis of a major dating technique. Study of a
Investigating Environments on a Global Scale 179

particular set of rings, however, can also reveal important environmental data,
Key Concepts for example whether growth was slow (implying dense local forest cover)
Reconstructing the or fast (implying light forest). Tree growth is complex, and many other factors
Environment on a may affect it, but temperature and soil moisture do tend to be dominant.
Global Scale Annual and decade-to-decade variations show up far more clearly in tree-
rings than in ice cores, and tree-rings can also record sudden and dramatic
Evidence From Sea and Ice Cores: shocks to the climate. For example, data from Virginia indicate that the
analysis of isotopic ratios within alarming mortality and near abandonment of Jamestown, Virginia, the first
dateable layers of ocean sediment permanent European settlement in the United States, occurred during an
and ice can give an accurate idea
extraordinary drought, the driest seven-year episode in 770 years (1606–12 ce;
of climate. Studies from across the
world are all in broad agreement see pp. 94–95).
about what global climate was like The study of tree-rings and climate (dendroclimatology) has also
over the past few million years progressed by using X-ray measurements of cell size and density as an
indication of environmental productivity. More recently, ancient temperatures
Evidence From Tree-rings:
have been derived from tree-rings by means of the carbon isotope ratios
analysis of tree-rings gives a finer-
scale idea of what the environment preserved in their cellulose. Isotopic evidence preserved in the cellulose of
was like in different areas up to timbers of the tamarisk tree, contained in the ramp that the Romans used
about 10,000 years ago to overcome the besieged Jewish citadel of Masada in 73 ce, have revealed
to Israeli archaeologists that the climate at that time was wetter and more
amenable to agriculture than it is today.
The role of tree-rings makes it clear that it is organic remains above all
that provide the richest source of evidence for environmental reconstruction.
We now take a look at the surviving traces of plants and animals and what
these can tell us about ancient environments.
Reconstructing the Plant Environment

The prime goal in archaeological plant studies is to try to reconstruct what
the vegetation was like in the past at any particular time or place. But we
should not forget that plants lie at the base of the food chain. The plant
communities of a given area and period will therefore provide clues to local
animal and human life, and will also reflect soil conditions and climate. Some
types of vegetation react relatively quickly to changes in climate (though less
quickly than insects, for instance), and the shifts of plant communities in both
latitude and altitude are the most direct link between climatic change and
the terrestrial human environment, for example in the Ice Age.
Plant studies in archaeology have always been overshadowed by faunal
analysis, simply because bones are more conspicuous than plant remains in
excavation. Bones may sometimes survive better, but usually plant remains
are present in greater numbers than bones. Thanks to the discovery that some
of the constituent parts of a plant are much more resistant to decomposition
than was previously believed, and that a huge amount of data survives that
can tell us something about long-dead vegetation, plant studies have become
very important. As with so many of the specializations on which archaeology
can call, these analyses require a great deal of time and funds.
Some of the most informative techniques for making an overall assessment
of plant communities in a particular period involve analysis not of the biggest
remains but of the tiniest, microbotanical remains, especially pollen.
Microbotanical Remains
Pollen AnAlysis. Palynology, or the study of pollen grains (see box
overleaf), was developed by a Swedish geologist, Lennart von Post, at the
beginning of the twentieth century. It has proved invaluable to archaeology,
since it can be applied to a wide range of sites and provides information on
chronology as well as environment and forest clearance.
While palynology cannot produce an exact picture of past environments,
it does give some idea of fluctuations in vegetation through time, whatever
their causes may be (whether climatic or human), which can be compared
with results from other methods. Pollen studies can also supply much-needed
information for environments as ancient as those of the Hadar sediments and
the Omo Valley in Ethiopia around 3 million years ago. It is usually assumed
that these regions were always as dry as they are now, but pollen analysis has
shown that they were much wetter and greener between 3.5 and 2.5 million
years ago, with even some tropical plants present. The Hadar, which is now
semi-desert with scattered trees and shrubs, was rich, open grassland, with
dense woodland by lakes and along rivers. The change to drier conditions,
around 2.5 million years ago, can be seen in the reduction of tree pollen in
favor of more grasses.
Key Concepts
Reconstructing the Plant Environment
MICROBOTANICAL REMAINS MACROBOTANICAL REMAINS
Pollen: most useful for the study of minor fluctuations Seeds and Fruits: can usually be identified to species,
in climate over the last 12,000 years, although pollen can but interpretation can be difficult since they can be brought
be preserved for millions of years in some contexts into a site from elsewhere
Phytoliths: survive very well in most archaeological Plant Residues: can give some idea of what species
sediments and can add to the picture of the environment were available
built up from other sources
Wood: charcoal survives well in the archaeological record,
Diatoms: found in lake and shore sediments and thus and can be identified to species, but what is found tends
useful for the analysis of past marine environments to reflect human selection of wood rather than the full
range of species growing around a site
Reconstructing the Plant Environment 181

Pollen
Analysis
All hay fever sufferers will be aware of sandy sediments or open sites exposed total number of grains in that layer—
the pollen “rain” that can afflict them to weathering, preserve pollen poorly. and then plotted as a curve. The curves
in the spring and summer. Pollen In wet sites, or unexcavated areas, can be seen as a reflection of climatic
grains—the tiny male reproductive samples are extracted in long cores, but fluctuations through the sequence,
bodies of flowering plants—have an in dry sites a series of separate samples using the present-day tolerances
almost indestructible outer shell (exine) can be removed from the sections. of these plants as a guide.
that can survive for tens of thousands On an archaeological excavation, The curves can also show the human
of years. In pollen analysis the exines small samples are usually extracted at impact on past vegetation. The diagram
are extracted from the soil, studied regular stratified intervals (great care shown below is based on a pollen core
under the microscope, and identified must be taken to avoid contamination). from Northern Ireland, and reveals
according to the distinctive exine shape Pollen can also be found in mud bricks, the impact of the first farmers in the
and surface ornamentation of different vessels, tombs, mummy wrappings, the area. Forest clearance is indicated
families and genera of plants. Once guts of preserved bodies, ancient feces, c. 4150 bce with a fall in tree pollen
quantified, these identifications are and many other contexts. (especially elm and oak) and a marked
plotted as curves on a pollen diagram. increase in open-country and field
Each plant category may then be Examination and Counting species, such as grass and sorrel. The
studied for signs of climatic fluctuation, A small portion of each sample is subsequent regeneration of forest cover
or forest clearance and crop planting. studied under the microscope in an reflects the non-intensive nature of early
attempt to identify a few hundred grains. farming in the area.
Preservation Then the quantity of pollen for each
The most favorable sediments for plant type is calculated for each (Below right) Pollen data from Northern Ireland
preservation of pollen are acidic and layer—usually as a percentage of the reveal the impact of the first farmers in the area.
poorly aerated peat bogs and lake beds,
where biological decay is impeded
3280 bce
and grains undergo rapid burial. Cave
Forest Cover
sediments are also usually suitable
because of their humidity and constant
3695 bce
temperature. Other contexts, such as
Regeneration
(Below left) Scanning electron micrograph
of a selection of pollen grains.
4105 bce Farming
Clearance
4200 bce
Sorrel & ribwort plantain
Natural
Pine, alder, & birch
forest cover
Nettles & grass
Hazel
Oak
Elm
Phytoliths. A fast-developing branch of microbotanical studies concerns
phytoliths, which were first recognized as components in archaeological
contexts as long ago as 1908, but have only been studied systematically in
the last few decades. These are minute particles of silica (plant opal) derived
from the cells of plants, and they survive after the rest of the organism has
decomposed or been burned. They are common in hearths and ash layers,
but are also found inside pottery, plaster, and even on stone tools and the
teeth of animals: grass phytoliths have been found adhering to herbivorous
animal teeth from Bronze Age, Iron Age, and medieval sites in Europe.
These crystals are useful because, like pollen grains, they are produced in
large numbers, they survive well in ancient sediments, and they have myriad
distinctive shapes and sizes that vary according to type. They inform us
primarily about the use people made of particular plants, but their simple
presence adds to the picture of the environment built up from other sources.
In particular, a combination of phytolith and pollen analysis can be a
powerful tool for environmental reconstruction, since the two methods have
complementary strengths and weaknesses. The American scholar Dolores
Phytoliths are minute particles of silica in Piperno has studied cores from the Gatun Basin, Panama, the pollen content
plant cells that survive after the rest of the
plant has decomposed. Some are specific to
of which had already revealed a sequence of vegetation change from 11,300
certain parts of the plant (e.g. stem or leaf). years ago to the present. She found that the phytoliths in the cores confirmed
the pollen sequence, with the exception that evidence for agriculture and
forest clearance (i.e. the appearance of maize, and an increase in grass at the
expense of trees) appeared around 4850 years ago in the phytoliths, about 1000
years earlier than in the pollen. This early evidence is probably attributable
to small clearings that do not show up in pollen diagrams because grains
from the surrounding forest overwhelm the samples.
Moreover, phytoliths often survive in sediments that are hostile to the
preservation of fossil pollen (because of oxidation or microbial activity),
and may thus provide the only available evidence for paleoenvironment or
vegetational change. Another advantage is that, while all grass pollen looks
the same, grass phytoliths can be assigned to ecologically different groups.
It has recently been discovered that aluminum ions in phytoliths can be used
to distinguish between forested and herbaceous vegetations, while oxygen
and hydrogen isotope signatures in phytoliths will also provide important
environmental data.
Diatom Analysis. Another method of environmental reconstruction using

plant microfossils is diatom analysis. Diatoms are single-cell algae that have
cell walls of silica instead of cellulose, and these silica cell walls survive after
the algae die. They accumulate in great numbers at the bottom of any body
of water in which the algae live; a few are found in peat, but most come from
lake and shore sediments.

Diatoms have been recorded, identified, and classified for more than 200
years. The process of identifying and counting them is much like that used
in palynology, as is the collection of samples in the field. Their well-defined
shapes and ornamentations permit identification to a high level, and their
assemblages directly reflect the types of algae present and their diatom
productivity, and, indirectly, the water’s salinity, alkalinity, and nutrient
content. From the environmental requirements of different species (in terms
of habitat, salinity, and nutrients), one can determine what their immediate
environment was at different periods.
Since diatom assemblages can indicate whether water was fresh, brackish,
or salt, they have been used to identify, for example, the period when
lakes became isolated from the sea in areas of tectonic uplift, to locate past
shorelines, and to reveal water pollution. For instance, the diatom sequence
in sediments at the site of the former Lake Wervershoof in the Netherlands
suggests that in around 800 ce seawater entered and overcame what had been
a freshwater lake, causing a hiatus in human occupation of the immediate area.
All these microbotanical techniques mentioned—studies of pollen,
phytoliths, and diatoms—can only be carried out by specialists. For
archaeologists, however, a far more direct contact with environmental
evidence comes from the larger, macrobotanical plant remains that they
can actually see and conserve themselves in the course of excavation.
Macrobotanical Remains
A variety of bigger types of plant remains are potentially retrievable, and
provide important information about which plants grew near sites, which
A variety of diatoms, the microscopic single- were used or consumed by people, and so on. Here we shall focus on
cell algae, the silica cell walls of which
survive in many sediments after death.
the valuable clues that macrobotanical remains provide regarding local
Study of the changing species in a deposit environmental conditions.
can help scientists reconstruct fluctuations
in past environments.
Retrieval of vegetation from sediments has been made easier by the
development of screening (sieving) and flotation techniques able to separate
organic material from soil. In flotation, samples of soil from an excavation
are poured into an overflowing tank, the lighter organic material floating
to the top and spilling over the lip to be caught in sieves of different grades.
This material is then dried and identified.
Sediments are by no means the only source of plant remains, which have
also been found in the stomachs of frozen mammoths and preserved bog
bodies; in ancient feces; on teeth; on stone tools; and in residues inside
vessels. The remains themselves are varied.
seeds And Fruits. Ancient seeds and fruits can usually be identified to
species, despite changes in their shape caused by charring or waterlogging.
In some cases, the remains have disintegrated but have left their imprint
behind—grain impressions are fairly common on pottery, leaf impressions are
also known, and imprints exist on materials ranging from plaster to leather and
corroded bronze. Identification, of course, depends on the type and quality of
traces. Not all such finds necessarily mean that a plant grew locally: grape pips,
for example, may come from imported fruit, while impressions on potsherds
may mislead since pottery can travel far from its place of manufacture.
PlAnt residues. Chemical analysis of plant residues in vessels will be dealt

with below in the context of human diet, but the results can give some idea
of what species were available. Pottery vessels themselves may incorporate
plant fibers (not to mention shell, feathers, or blood) as a tempering material,
and microscopic analysis can sometimes identify these remains—for example,
study of early pots from South Carolina and Georgia in the United States
revealed the presence of shredded stems of Spanish moss, a member of the
pineapple family.
remAins oF Wood. Study of charcoal (burnt wood) is making a growing

contribution to archaeological reconstruction of environments and of human
use of timber. A very durable material, charcoal is commonly found by the
archaeologist during excavation. Fragments can be examined by the specialist
under the microscope, and identified (thanks to the anatomy of the wood)
normally at the genus level, and sometimes to species. Charcoal and charred
seeds have also proved the most reliable material from which to take samples
for radiocarbon dating (see Chapter 4).
Many charcoal samples are the remains of firewood, but others may come
from wooden structures, furniture, and implements burnt at some point in
a site’s history. Samples therefore inevitably tend to reflect human selection
of wood rather than the full range of species growing around the site.
Nevertheless, the totals for each species provide some idea of one part of the
vegetation at a given time.
Occasionally, charcoal analysis can be combined with other evidence
to reveal something not only of the local environment but also of human
adaptation to it. At Boomplaas Cave in South Africa, excavation has uncovered
traces of human occupation stretching back 70,000 years. There is a clear
difference between Ice Age and post-Ice Age charcoals: at times of extreme
cold when conditions were also drier, between 22,000 and 14,000 years ago,
the species diversity both in the charcoals and the pollen was low, whereas
at times of higher rainfall and/or temperature the species diversity increased.
A similar pattern of species diversity is seen also in the small mammals.
The vegetation around Boomplaas Cave at the time of maximum cold and
drought was composed mainly of shrubs and grass with few plant resources
that could be used by people; the larger mammal fauna was dominated by

grazers that included “giant” species of buffalo, horse, and hartebeest,
which became extinct by about 10,000 years ago.
The Boomplaas charcoal directly reflects the gradual change in climate
and vegetation that led to the disappearance of the large grazers, and to a
corresponding shift in subsistence practices by the cave’s occupants. The
charcoal analysis also highlights more subtle changes that reflect a shift in
the season of maximum rainfall. The woody vegetation in the Cango Valley—
where the cave is located—is today dominated by the thorn tree, Acacia karroo,
characteristic of large areas in southern Africa where it is relatively dry and
rain falls mostly in summer. Thorn tree charcoal is absent in the Ice Age
samples at Boomplaas, but it appears from about 5000 years ago and by
2000 years ago is the dominant species, indicating a shift to hot, relatively
Scanning electron micrograph of charcoal moist summers. As the number of species that enjoy summer rainfall
from the thorn tree Acacia karroo found
at Boomplaas Cave.
increased, the inhabitants of the cave were able to make more use of a new
range of fruits, the seeds of which can be found preserved at the site.
By no means all wood subjected to this kind of analysis is charred.
Increasing quantities of waterlogged wood are recovered from wet sites in
many parts of the world. And in some conditions, such as extreme cold or
dryness, desiccated wood may survive without either burning or waterlogging.
other sources oF evidence. A great deal of information on vegetation

in the less remote periods studied by archaeologists can be obtained from art,
from texts (e.g. the writings of Pliny the Elder, Roman farming texts, accounts
and illustrations by early explorers, such as Captain Cook), and even from
early photographs.
No single category of evidence can provide us with a total picture of local
or regional vegetation, of small-scale trends or long-term changes: each
produces a partial version of past realities. Input is needed from every source
available, and, as will be seen below, these must be combined with results
from the other forms of data studied in this chapter in order to reconstruct
the best approximation of a past environment.
In this section we have seen how we can use a variety of archaeological data
to try to reconstruct the plant environment at any particular place or time in
the past. But what evidence of animal life is there and what can this tell us
about past environments?
Reconstructing the Animal Environment

Animal remains were the first evidence used by nineteenth-century
archaeologists to characterize the climate of the prehistoric periods that they
encountered in their excavations. It was realized that different species were
absent, present, or particularly abundant in certain layers, and hence also in
certain periods, and the assumption was that this reflected changing climate.
Today, in order to use faunal remains as a guide to environment, we need
to look more critically at the evidence than did those nineteenth-century
pioneers. For instance, we need to understand the complex relationship that
exists between modern animals and their environment. We also need to
investigate how the animal remains we are studying arrived at a site—either
naturally, or through the activities of carnivores (including humans), and thus
how representative they may be of the variety of animals in a particular period.
Microfauna
Small animals (microfauna) tend to be better indicators of climatic and
environmental change than are large species, because they are much more
sensitive to small variations in climate and adapt to them relatively quickly.
In addition, since microfauna tend to accumulate naturally on a site, they
reflect the immediate environment more accurately than larger animals,
whose remains are often accumulated through human or animal predation.
As with pollen, small animals, and especially insects, are also usually found
in far greater numbers than larger ones, which improves the statistical
significance of their analysis.
The remains of a wide variety of insectivores, rodents, and bats are found
on archaeological sites, but it is necessary to ensure as far as possible that
the bones were deposited at the same time as the layer in question, and that
burrowing has not occurred. Certain small species can be indicative of fairly
specific environmental conditions, but it should be remembered that, even
if the remains are not intrusive, they will not always indicate the immediate
environment—if they come from owl pellets, for example, they may have been
Key Concepts caught up to a few kilometers from the site (the contents of bird pellets can
Reconstructing the nevertheless be of great value in assessing local environments).
Animal Environment Bones of birds and fish are particularly fragile, but are well worth studying.
They can for example be used to determine the seasons in which particular
Microfauna are better indicators of sites were occupied. Birds are sensitive to climatic change, and the alternation
climatic and environmental change of “cold” and “warm” species in the last Ice Age has been of great help in
than macrofauna because they assessing environment. One problem is that it is sometimes difficult to decide
are much more sensitive to small
whether a bird is present naturally or has been brought in by a human or
variations in climate and adapt to
them relatively quickly animal predator.
The calcium carbonate shells of land molluscs (such as snails) are
Microfauna tend to accumulate preserved in many types of sediment. They reflect local conditions, and can be
naturally on a site and reflect responsive to changes in microclimate, particularly to changes in temperature
the immediate environment
and rainfall. But we need to take into account that many species have a very
more accurately than larger
animals, whose remains are often broad tolerance, and their reaction to change is relatively slow, so that they
accumulated through human or “hang on” in adverse areas, and disperse slowly into newly acceptable areas.
animal predation The changing percentages of marine mollusc species through time can reveal
something of the nature of the coastal microenvironment—such as whether
Reconstructing the Animal Environment 187

it was sandy or rocky—through study of the modern preferences of the
species represented. The climatic change suggested by these alterations in the
presence or abundance of different species can be matched with the results
of oxygen isotope analysis of the shells.
A wide range of insects may also be found, in the form of adults, larvae,
and (in the case of flies) puparia. The study of insects (paleoentomology)
was rather neglected in archaeology until about thirty years ago, since when
a great deal of pioneering work has been done. Insect exoskeletons can
Grasshopper engraved on a bone fragment be quite resistant to decomposition, and some assemblages comprise
from the late Ice Age (Magdalenian) site of
Enlène, Ariège, France. Insects respond
thousands of individuals. Since we know the distribution and environmental
rapidly to climatic change, and are sensitive requirements of their modern descendants, it is often possible to use insect
indicators of the timing and scale of
environmental variations.
remains as accurate indicators of the likely climatic conditions (and to some
extent of the vegetation) prevailing in particular periods and local areas.
Some species have very precise requirements in terms of where they like to
breed and the kinds of food their larvae need. Rather than use single indicator
species to reconstruct a microenvironment, however, it is safer to consider
a number of species (the ancient climate lying within the area of overlap
of their tolerance ranges).
Macrofauna
Remains of large animals found on archaeological sites mainly help us build
up a picture of past human diet (see below, pp. 190–91). As environmental
indicators they have proved less reliable than was once assumed, primarily
because they are not so sensitive to environmental changes as small animals,
but also because their remains will very likely have been deposited in an
archaeological context through human or animal action. Bones from animals
killed by carnivores, including humans, have been selected, and so cannot
accurately reflect the full range of fauna present in the environment. The ideal
is therefore to find accumulations of animal remains brought about by natural
accident or catastrophe—animals caught in a flash flood perhaps, or buried by
volcanic eruption, or that became frozen in permafrost. But such discoveries
are rare—very different from the usual accumulations of animal bones
encountered by archaeologists.
Assuming a suitable bone assemblage has been found and identified to
species, what can the results tell us about the ancient environment?
The anatomy and especially the teeth of large animals tell us something
about their diet and hence, in the case of herbivores, of the type of vegetation
they prefer. Most information about range and habitat comes from studies of
modern species, however, on the assumption that behavior has not changed
substantially since the period in question. These studies also show that large
animals will tolerate—that is, have the potential to withstand or exploit—
a much wider range of temperatures and environments than was once
thought. So the presence of such species as woolly rhinoceros in an Ice Age
deposit should be regarded merely as proof of the ability of that species to
tolerate low temperatures, rather than as evidence of a cold climate.
Large mammals are also not generally good indicators of vegetation, since
herbivores can thrive in a wide range of environments and eat a variety of
plants. Thus, individual species cannot usually be regarded as characteristic of
one particular habitat, but there are exceptions. For example, reindeer reached
northern Spain in the last Ice Age, as is shown not only by discoveries of their
bones but also by cave art. Such major shifts clearly reflect environmental
change. In the rock art of the Sahara, too, one can see clear evidence for the
presence of species, such as giraffe and elephant, that could not survive in
the area today, and thus for dramatic environmental modification.
As will be seen below, fauna can also be used to determine in which
seasons of the year a site was occupied. In coastal sites, marine resources and
herbivore remains may come and go through the archaeological sequence as
changes in sea level extended or drowned the coastal plain, thus changing the
sites’ proximity to the shore and the availability of grazing.
We should remember that faunal fluctuations can have causes other than
climate or people; additional factors may include competition, epidemics, or
fluctuations in numbers of predators. Moreover, small-scale local variations
in climate and weather can have major effects on the numbers and distribution
of wild animals, so that despite its high powers of resistance a species may
decline from extreme abundance to virtual extinction within a few years.
Subsistence and Diet

Having discussed methods for reconstructing the environment, we now turn
to how we find out about what people extracted from it, in other words, how
they subsisted. When reconstructing early subsistence, it is useful to make
a distinction between meals—direct evidence of various kinds as to what
people were eating at a particular time—and diet, which implies the pattern
of consumption over a long period of time.
So far as meals are concerned, the sources of information are varied. Written
records, when they survive, indicate some of the things people were eating,
and so do representations in art. Even modern ethnoarchaeology helps
indicate what they might have been eating by broadening our understanding
of the range of options. The actual remains of the foodstuffs eaten can also
be highly informative.
For the more difficult question of diet, there are several helpful techniques
of investigation. Some methods focus on human bones. Isotopic analyses
of the skeletal remains of a human population can indicate, for example, the
balance of marine and terrestrial foods in the diet, and even show differences in
nutrition between the more and less advantaged members of the same society.
Subsistence and Diet 189

These millet noodles, the earliest known Most of our information about early subsistence, however, comes directly
(dating from around 4000 years ago) were
found preserved in an overturned bowl
from the remains of what was eaten. Archaeozoology (or zooarchaeology),
at the Lajia site in northwestern China. the study of past human use of animals, is now big business in archaeology.
Discovered in 2005, the remains indicate
that routine millet-milling, including the
There can be few excavations anywhere that do not have a specialist to study
repeated stretching of dough by hand to the animal bones found. The Paleo-Indian rockshelter of Meadowcroft,
form a strand and its cooking in boiling
water, was practiced in late Neolithic China.
Pennsylvania, for example, yielded about a million animal bones (and almost
1.5 million plant specimens). On medieval and recent sites, the quantities
of material recovered can be even more formidable. Paleoethnobotany (or
archaeobotany), the study of past human use of plants, is likewise a growing
discipline. In both areas, a detailed understanding of the conditions of
preservation on a site is the first prerequisite to ensure that the most efficient
extraction technique is adopted. In both areas, too, the focus of interest has
developed to include not just the species eaten, but also the way these were
managed. The process of domestication for both plants and animals is now
a major research topic.
Interpretation of food remains can be problematic, and requires quite
sophisticated procedures. We can initially reconstruct the range of food
available in the surrounding environment (see above, pp. 186–89), but the only
incontrovertible proof that a particular plant or animal species was actually
consumed is the presence of its traces in stomach contents or in desiccated
ancient fecal matter. If such evidence is not available, the archaeologist must
try to determine whether a foodstuff was actually eaten from the context or
condition of the finds. For instance, if bones are cut or burned they may have
been butchered and cooked.
Plants that were staples in the diet may be underrepresented thanks to
the generally poor preservation of vegetable remains; fish bones likewise may
not survive well. The archaeologist therefore has to consider how far a site’s
food remains are representative of total diet. Here we need to assess a site’s
function, and whether it was inhabited once or frequently, for short or long
periods, irregularly or seasonally (season of occupation can sometimes be
deduced from plant and animal evidence as well). A long-term settlement
is likely to provide more representative food remains than a specialized camp
or kill site. Ideally, however, archaeologists should sample remains from a
variety of contexts or sites before making judgments about diet.
We will now look at some of the main forms of evidence for human
subsistence, as well as some of the different types of interpretations that
can be made.
What Can Plant Foods Tell Us about Diet?

We can learn something of diet from the study of microbotanical remains,
particularly through the study of phytoliths, which can, for example, help
in differentiating between wild and domestic species of plant. But the vast
majority of plant evidence that reaches the archaeologist is in the form of
macrobotanical remains, and these are much more useful when trying to
reconstruct diet.
Macrobotanical Remains
Macrobotanical remains may be desiccated (only in absolutely dry
environments, such as deserts or high mountains), waterlogged (only in
environments that have been permanently wet since the date of deposition),
or preserved by charring. In exceptional circumstances, volcanic eruption
can preserve botanical remains, such as at Cerén in El Salvador, where a
wide variety has been found carbonized, or as impressions, in numerous
vessels. Plant remains preserved in several different ways can sometimes
be encountered within the same site, but in most parts of the world charring
is the principal or only cause of preservation on habitation sites.
Occasionally, a single sample on a site will yield very large amounts of
material. More than 27 kg (60 lb) of charred barley, wheat, and other plants
came from one storage pit on a Bronze Age farm at Black Patch, southern
England, for example. This can sometimes give clues to the relative
importance of different cereals and legumes and weed flora, but the sample
nevertheless simply reflects a moment in time. What the archaeologist
really needs is a larger number of samples (each of preferably more than
100 grains) from a single period on the site, and, if possible, from a range
of types of deposit, in order to obtain reliable information about what species
were exploited, their importance, and their uses during the period of time
in question.
When we have obtained enough samples we need to quantify the plant
remains: for example by weight or by number of remains. Some archaeologists
What Can Plant Foods Tell Us about Diet? 191

simply arrange samples in order of abundance. But this can be misleading,
Key Concepts as was shown by the British archaeobotanist Jane Renfrew in her study of
What Can Plant Foods the material from the Neolithic settlement of Sitagroi, Greece. She noted
Tell Us About Diet? that the most abundant plants may have been preserved by chance (such
as an accident in the course of baking). Similarly, species that produce large
Macrobotanical Remains: these quantities of seeds or grains may appear more important in the archaeological
can give us a good idea of what record than they actually were: at Sitagroi 19,000 seeds of knotgrass barely
plants were present at a site, but filled a thimble.
there are problems of quantification
and interpretation. It is important to
understand how a plant might have interPreting the context And the remAins. It is crucial for the
been processed and used archaeologist or specialist to try to understand the archaeological context
of a plant sample, as this can reveal more about exactly how the plant
Plant Residues on Artifacts: was being used. In the past, attention used to be focused primarily on
chemical traces of plants can
the botanical history of the plants themselves, their morphology, place of
be found on some artifacts (often
pots and tools) and these can be origin, and evolution. Now, however, archaeologists also want to know more
tested and compared against a about the human use of plants in hunting-and-gathering economies, and
reference collection in order to in agriculture—which plants were important in the diet, and how they were
identify a species gathered or grown, processed, stored, and cooked. This means understanding
the different stages of traditional plant processing; recognizing the effect
Domestication of Wild Plant
Species: various techniques can
different processes have on the remains; and identifying the different contexts
help to answer the crucial question in the archaeological record. In many cases it is the plant remains that reveal
of whether plant remains found in the function of the location where they are found, and thus the nature of the
the archaeological record are from context, rather than vice versa.
wild or domesticated species
In a farming economy, for instance, there are many different stages of
plant processing, summed up in the illustration opposite: cereals have to be
threshed, winnowed, and cleaned before consumption, in order to separate
the grain from the chaff, straw, and weeds; but seed corn also has to be stored
for the next year’s crop; and food grain might also be stored unthreshed in
order to get the harvested crop out of the rain, and would then be threshed
only when needed. From ethnoarchaeological and experimental observations
it is known that certain of these activities leave characteristic residues with
which archaeological samples can be compared, whether they are from ovens,
living floors, latrines, or storage pits.
chemicAl residues in PlAnt remAins. Various chemicals survive in plant

remains themselves, which provide an alternative basis for their identification.
These compounds include proteins, fatty lipids, and even DNA. The analysis
of lipids has so far proved the most useful method for distinguishing
different cereal and legume species, but always in combination with other
non-chemical identification techniques. DNA offers the prospect of eventually
resolving identification at an even more detailed level and of perhaps tracing
family trees of plants and patterns of trade in plant products.
BEHAVIOR IN THE PAST PRESERVATION OF
THE EVIDENCE
1 THRESHING 2 RAKING to remove 3 WINNOWING 4 COARSE SCREENING WELLS

Straw flooring, etc. straw AND PITS
7 WINNOWING
5 ROASTING (AND MALTING) 6 POUNDING 8 SCREENING 9 FINE SCREENING HEARTHS

Accidental charring
LATRINES
Waterlogged
sewage
10 OVEN DRYING 11 STORAGE 12 HAND SORTING 13 GRINDING
Infested grain burnt, granary fire
Cereal crop processing: waste products PlAnt imPressions. Impressions of plant remains are quite common
from many of these stages may survive
as charred or waterlogged remains.
in fired clay, and do at least prove that the species in question was present
at the spot where the clay was worked. Such impressions, however, do not
necessarily prove that the plant was important in the economy or diet,
since they constitute a very skewed sample and only seeds or grains of
medium size tend to leave imprints. One has to be particularly careful
with impressions on potsherds, because pottery can be discarded far from
its point of manufacture, and in any case many pots were deliberately
decorated with grain impressions, thus perhaps overemphasizing the
importance of a species.
Analysis of Plant Residues on Artifacts

As we shall see in Chapter 7, microwear analysis of a tool edge can identify
broadly whether the tool was used to cut meat, wood, or some other material.
Discovery of phytoliths can show what type of grasses were cut by a tool.
Microscopic study can also reveal and identify plant fibers. Another method
is chemical analysis of residues on tool edges: certain chemical reagents can
provide a means of proving whether plant residues are present on tools or in

vessels—thus, potassium iodide turns blue if starch grains are present, and
yellow-brown for other plant materials. Starch grains can also be detected by
microscope and, for example, have been extracted with a needle from crevices
in the surfaces of prehistoric grinding stones from Aguadulce Shelter in the
humid tropics of Panama. The species of the grains can be identified, and
show that such tubers as manioc and arrowroot—which do not usually leave
recoverable fossilized remains—were being cultivated here c. 5000 bce, the
earliest recorded occurrence of manioc in the Americas.
The site also yielded maize starch, and this technique is thus important
for proving the presence of maize in structures or sites without charred
remains: for example, at the Early Formative village of Real Alto (Ecuador),
maize starch grains and phytoliths from maize cobs have been retrieved
from stone tools and sediments dating to 2800–2400 bce. Starch grains have
even been recovered from a large flat piece of basalt in a hut at Ohalo II,
Israel, dating to about 23,000 years ago. This was clearly a grindstone,
and the grains from barley, and perhaps wheat, show that wild cereals
were already being processed at this early date. Recently, in Mozambique,
starch grains retrieved from the surfaces of Middle Stone Age stone tools
showed that early Homo sapiens was consuming grass seeds at least 105,000
years ago.
Chemical investigation of fats preserved in vessels is also making progress,
because it has been found that fatty acids, amino acids (the constituents of
protein), and similar substances are very stable and preserve well. Samples
are extracted from residues, purified, concentrated in a centrifuge, dried,
and then analyzed by means of a spectrometer, and by a technique known
as chromatography, which separates the major constituent components of
the fats. Interpretation of the results is made by comparison with a reference
collection of “chromatograms” (readouts) from different substances.
For example, the German chemist Rolf Rottländer has identified mustard,
olive oil, seed oils, butter, and other substances on potsherds, including
specimens from Neolithic lake dwellings. In work on sherds from the
German Iron Age hillfort of the Heuneburg, he was able to prove that some
amphorae—storage vessels usually associated with liquids—did indeed
contain olive oil and wine, whereas in the case of a Roman amphora the
charcoal-like black residue proved to be not liquid but wheat flour. This
important technique not only provides dietary evidence, but also helps to
define the function of the vessels with which the fats are associated. Ever
more refined techniques are currently being developed for identifying food
species from protein, lipid, and DNA biochemical analysis of small fragments
of plant material. Indeed, DNA extracted from two 2400-year-old amphorae
from a shipwreck off the Greek island of Chios has revealed that they
probably contained olive oil flavoured with herbs.
The Domestication of Wild Plant Species
One of the major areas of debate in modern archaeology concerns the
question of human management of plants, and particularly whether some
species that we find were wild or domesticated, since this sheds light on
one of the most crucial aspects of human history: the transition from a
mobile (hunter-gatherer) to a settled (agricultural) way of life. It can often
be difficult, impossible, or irrelevant to try to distinguish between wild and
domesticated varieties, since many types of cultivation do not change the
form of the plant, and even in cases where such change occurs we do not
know how long it took to appear. Experimental evidence suggests that the
transition from wild to domestic could have been complete within only 20
to 200 years—without conscious intervention on the farmers’ part—but in
practice it seems to have taken about a millennium. Any line drawn between
wild and domestic plants does not necessarily correspond to a distinction
between gathering and agriculture.
There are nevertheless cases where a clear distinction can be made
between wild and fully domestic forms. Macrobotanical remains are of
most use here. For example, the American archaeologist Bruce Smith found
that 50,000 charred seeds of Chenopodium (goosefoot), nearly 2000 years old
from Russell Cave, Alabama, exhibited a set of interrelated characteristics
reflecting domestication. He was thus able to add this starchy-seed species
to the brief list of cultivated plants—including bottle gourd, squash, marsh
elder, sunflower, and tobacco—available in the garden plots of the Eastern
Woodlands before the introduction of maize by about 200 ce.
Wild and domestic cereals. Clockwise from There has been some debate in recent years about whether wild and
top left: wild einkorn, domestic einkorn,
extinct wild maize, and domestic maize.
domestic legumes can be differentiated by their structure, but archaeobotanical
The wild einkorn sheds its grain easily. work by the British scholar Ann Butler suggests that there is no foolproof
But the tougher domestic form does so
only when threshed: a real advantage for
way to do this, even in a scanning electron microscope. Cereals, on the other
the early farmer, since if grains fall off before hand, where well preserved, are more straightforward, and domestication can
threshing, they are lost.
be identified by clues, for example the loss of anatomical features, such as
the brittle rachis, which facilitate the dispersal of seeds by natural agents. In
other words, once people began to cultivate cereals, they gradually developed
varieties that retained their seeds until they could be harvested.
Plant Evidence from Literate Societies

Archaeologists studying the beginnings of plant cultivation, or plant use
among hunter-gatherers, have to rely on the kind of scientific evidence
outlined above, coupled with the judicious use of ethnoarchaeological research
and modern experiments. For the student of diet among literate societies,
however, particularly the great civilizations, there is a wealth of evidence for
the domestication of plants, as well as for farming practices, cookery, and many
other aspects of diet to be found written in documents and in art.

Harvesting and processing a cereal crop:
scenes depicted on the walls of a New
Kingdom tomb at Thebes in Egypt.
The Greek writer Herodotus, for example, gives us plenty of information

about eating habits in the fifth century bce, notably in Egypt, a civilization for
which there is extensive evidence about food and diet. Much of the evidence
for the pharaonic period comes from paintings and foodstuffs in tombs, so it
has a certain upper-class bias, but there is also information to be found about
the diet of humbler folk, from plant remains in workers’ villages, such as that
at Tell el-Amarna, and from hieroglyphic texts. In the later Ptolemaic period
there are records of corn allowances for workers, such as the third-century bce
accounts concerning grain allotted to workers on a Faiyum agricultural estate.
Models are also instructive about food preparation: the tomb of Meketre, a
nobleman of the 12th dynasty (2000–1790 bce), contained a set of wooden
models, including women kneading flour into loaves, and others brewing
beer. Three newly deciphered Babylonian clay tablets from Iraq, 3750 years old,
present cuneiform texts containing 35 recipes for a wide variety of rich meat
stews, and thus constitute the world’s oldest cookbook.
In the New World, we owe much of our knowledge of Aztec food crops,
fishing practices, and natural history to the invaluable writings of the
sixteenth-century Franciscan scholar Bernardino de Sahagún, based on his
own observations and on the testimony of his Native American informants.
It should be remembered, however, that written evidence and art tend
to give a very short-term view of subsistence. Only archaeology can look at
human diet with a long-term perspective.
Investigating Diet, Seasonality, and Domestication
from Animal Remains
Although plant foods may always have constituted the greater part of the
human diet—except in special circumstances or high latitudes such as the
Arctic—meat may well have been considered more important, either as food
or as a reflection of the prowess of the hunter or the status of the herder.
Animal remains are usually better preserved on archaeological sites too so
that, unlike plant remains, they have been studied since the very beginnings
of archaeology.
The first question the archaeologist must face when interpreting animal
remains is to decide whether they are present through human actions rather
than through natural causes or the activities of other predators (as in the case
of carnivore debris, owl pellets, burrowing animals, etc.). Animals may also
have been exploited at a site for non-dietary purposes (skins for clothing,
bone and antler for tools).
As with plant remains, therefore, one must be particularly careful
to examine the context and content of faunal samples. This is usually
straightforward in sites of recent periods, but in the Paleolithic, especially
the Lower Paleolithic, the question is crucial.
Proving humAn exPloitAtion oF AnimAls in the PAleolithic.

In the past, association of animal bones and stone tools was often taken
as proof that humans were responsible for the presence of the faunal
remains, or at least exploited them. We now know, however, that this is
not always a fair assumption, and since in any case many used bones are not
Key Concepts associated with tools, archaeologists have sought more definite proof from
Information from the marks of stone tools on the bones themselves. A great deal of work is
Animal Resources currently aimed at proving the existence of such marks, and finding ways
of differentiating them from other traces, such as scratches and punctures
Animal remains are often well- made by animal teeth, etching by plant roots, abrasion by sedimentary
preserved on archaeological sites particles or post-depositional weathering, and damage by excavation tools.
This is also part of the search for reliable evidence in the current major
It is important to establish whether
debate in Paleolithic studies as to whether early humans were genuine
animal remains are present on a site
through human agency or through hunters, or merely scavenged meat from carcasses of animals killed by
other causes other predators.
Much attention has been directed to bones from the famous Lower
We can sex and age animal bones, Paleolithic sites of Olduvai Gorge and Koobi Fora, in East Africa, that are
study their seasonality, and deduce
more than 1.5 million years old. Archaeologists used a scanning electron
whether the animals were wild or
domesticated, all of which helps us microscope to examine suspected toolmarks on the bones, comparing their
to understand how humans were results with marks produced by known processes on modern bones. The
exploiting the animal environment diagnostic feature of a toolmark produced by a slicing action, for example,
was a V-shaped groove with a series of longitudinal parallel lines at the
Investigating Diet, Seasonality, and Domestication from Animal Remains 197

Carnivore marks or toolmarks? (Above left) Round-bottomed
groove made on a modern bone by a hyena. (Above right)
V-shaped groove made on a modern bone by a sharp stone
flake. (Right) Fossil bone from Olduvai Gorge that may show
two slicing marks (s) made by a stone flake, and carnivore
tooth marks (t) made later.
(Below) Bones of contention: marks on two animal bones

from Dikika, Ethiopia, are thought by some specialists to
have been made by australopithecines with stone tools—
at 3.4 million years ago, this corresponds to the date of the
earliest known stone tools from Lomekwi in Kenya (see
p. 210) and also pushes back the date for butchery and
meat eating. The marks were examined by microscopy and
chemical analysis, and were clearly made before the bones
fossilized; their morphology fits tools far better than teeth.
bottom; marks made by carnivores were much more rounded (see illustration
above). They found that many bones had both toolmarks and carnivore
scratches, suggesting some competition for the carcass. In some cases, the
carnivore marks were clearly superimposed on the toolmarks, but in most
cases the carnivores seem to have got there first!
Recent work, however, suggests that very similar marks can be produced by
other causes, such as when bones are damaged by trampling. Thus microscopic
features alone are not sufficient evidence to prove human intervention.
The context of the find and the position of the marks need to be studied too.
More work still needs to be done before we can be sure of proving early
human activity in this way, and also of identifying episodes where our early
ancestors were hunters rather than scavengers. There are other types of
evidence, however, that can provide proof of human processing of bones.
These include artificial concentrations of bones in particular places, such as
the use of mammoth bones for the construction of huts in the Paleolithic of
Central and Eastern Europe. Burning of bones is another clear indication of
human processing.
Having demonstrated so far as possible that animal remains were indeed
produced by human action, the archaeologist then can move on to try to
answer the interesting questions, such as what people ate, in which seasons
they ate particular foods, how they hunted and butchered the animals, and
whether the animals were domesticated.
The most abundant and informative residues of animals are the
macroremains—bones, teeth, antlers, shells, etc. Numerous techniques are
now available to help extract information from data of this type. In analyzing
an assemblage of bones, we have first to identify them and then quantify
them, both in terms of numbers of animals and of meat weight. The amount
of meat represented by a bone will depend on the sex and age of the animal,
the season of death, and geographical variation in body size and in nutrition.
But if factors of age, sex, and season of death need to be allowed for, how are
they established?
Strategies of Use:
Deducing Age, Sex, and Seasonality from Large Fauna
Sexing is easy in cases where only the male has antlers (most deer), or large
canines (pig), or where a penis bone is present (dog), or where the female has
a different pelvic structure. Measurements of certain bones, such as the foot
bones of some animals, can sometimes provide two distinct clusters
of results, interpreted as male (large) and female (small).
The age of an animal can be assessed from such features as the degree
of closure of sutures in the skull, or, to a certain extent, from the stage of
development of limb bones. Age is then estimated by comparison with
information on these features in modern populations. Estimates of the age
at which mammals were killed, however, are usually based on the eruption
and wear patterns of the teeth.
The season of death is also a crucial factor. There are many ways of studying
seasonality from animal remains—for example, the identification of species

SASKATCHEWAN
Gull Lake
Bison-drive Sites
l
l
CA NA DA
Boarding US A
School
MONTANA
The driving of bison over bluff or cliff formed the “3rd bone layer,” which it indicated a drive of a “cow and bull”
edges was an important periodic included a fetal bone but no mature herd in the rutting season, between July
hunting method for thousands of years bulls, implying a late fall or winter drive and September, when pemmican (dried
in North America. Much was known of a herd composed of cows, calves, meat) had to be prepared for the winter.
from accounts by Native American and young bulls. A season or two later, A much later drive (probably just
informants recorded in the first decades another herd of 150 were driven over, before historic contact), produced the
of this century, but the picture needed forming the “2nd bone layer.” This had “1st bone layer.” Here the remains of
filling out through archaeological remains of mature bulls, and together thirty bison were subjected to light
investigation of actual drive sites. with the lack of fetal or newborn calves butchering, probably for transport to
The Boarding School Site

One of the first of such excavations
was undertaken by Thomas Kehoe in
the 1950s at the Boarding School site,
Montana. The work was carried out
with the help of the local Blackfoot tribe.
Boarding School was not a cliff, but one
of the more common, lower but abrupt
drops that led to a natural enclosure.
In a deep stratigraphy, three main bone
layers were found, with well-preserved
bison remains that gave insights into the
size and composition of the herd, and
hence into the seasons of the drives.
Bison numbers were assessed using
the “minimum number of individuals”
technique. Ages of the animals came
from the eruption sequence and degree
of wear on the teeth, and from bone
fusion, while sex was established on
the basis of size and pelvic shape.
The site proved to have been used
intermittently for a long period as a
temporary camp. Then c. 1600 ce
(according to radiocarbon dating of
charred bone) a herd of about 100 bison
was driven over the bluff. Their remains
Excavation of a group of bison skulls at

Gull Lake.
a distant camp: much of what was left The Gull Lake Site (Above left) Gull Lake bison drive.
behind was in articulated units. In the In the early 1960s Kehoe carried out
(Above right) Excavating the densely
earlier two layers, butchery techniques a similar excavation at the Gull Lake
packed bone layers at Gull Lake.
were similar but far more of each animal site, over the border in southwestern
was utilized, and much was processed Saskatchewan, Canada. Here, too,
on the spot. Clearly, the distance to the bison had been driven over a bluff into
home base was shorter than in the case a depression serving as a corral. Five
of the later drive. The lack of pottery at bone layers were encountered, one of
Boarding School emphasized its role as them (c. 1300 ce) perhaps representing
strictly a kill site and meat-processing the remains of as many as 900 bison. drives, however, processing was far
station. Traces of corral poles were The drives began in the late second more thorough, with few articulated
found and the total of 440 projectile century ce, and show little processing bones, and extensive scattering and
points suggested an average of 4 or 5 of bone: many limb bones and even burning of scrap, indicating a utilization
arrows used on each animal. spinal columns are intact. In the later for grease and pemmican.
only available at certain times of year, or which shed their antlers in specific
seasons. If it is known at what time of year the young of a species were born,
then remains of fetuses, or bones of the newly born, can pinpoint a season
of occupation (see box opposite and above).
The Question of Animal Domestication

An entirely different set of methods is required to assess the status of the
animals—i.e. whether they were wild or domesticated. Like the study of plant
domestication described earlier (see p. 195), this is a crucial question about one
of the most important developments in human history: the transition from
a mobile to a settled, agricultural way of life. In some cases the answer can be
obvious, such as where non-indigenous animals have been introduced onto
islands by humans—for example, the appearance of cattle, sheep, goat, dog,
and cat on Cyprus.

One criterion of animal domestication is human interference with the
natural breeding habits of certain species, which has led to changes in the
physical characteristics of such species from their wild state. But there are other
definitions, and specialists disagree about which physical changes in animals
are diagnostic of domestication. Too much emphasis on the wild/domestic
dichotomy may also mask a whole spectrum of human-animal relationships,
such as herd management without selective breeding. Nevertheless,
domestication, by any definition, clearly occurred separately in many parts of
the world, and archaeologists therefore need to differentiate fully wild from
fully domestic animals, and to investigate the process of domestication.
Among a number of other possible lines of evidence, certain tools may
indicate the presence of domesticated animals—for example, plows, yokes, and
horse trappings. Deformities and disease can also provide convincing evidence
for domestication. When used for traction, horses, cattle, and camels can all
sometimes suffer osteoarthritis or strain deformities on their lower limbs.
Work is also progressing on tracing the history of domestication through DNA.
Remains of Individual Meals

One of the most direct kinds of evidence of what people ate comes from
occasional finds of actual meals. At Pompeii, for example, meals of fish, eggs,
bread, and nuts were found intact on tables, as well as food in shops. Food is
often preserved in funerary contexts, as in the desiccated corncobs and other
items in Peruvian graves, or at Saqqara, Egypt, where the 2nd-dynasty tomb of
a noblewoman contained a huge variety of foodstuffs, constituting a rich and
elaborate meal that, to judge by the tomb paintings, was not unusual. The Han
period in China (206 bce–220 ce) had tombs stocked with food: that of the wife
of the Marquis of Dai held a unique collection of provisions, herbal medicines,
and prepared dishes in containers of lacquer, ceramic, and bamboo, with
labels attached, and even inventory slips giving the composition of the dishes!
It is unlikely, however, that such magnificent remains are representative of
everyday diet. Even the meals found so wonderfully preserved at Pompeii are
merely a tiny sample from a single day. The only way in which we can really
study what people ate habitually is to examine actual human remains.
Assessing Diet from Human Remains

The only incontrovertible evidence that something was actually consumed
by humans is its presence in either stomachs or feces. Both kinds of evidence
give us invaluable information about individual meals and short-term diet.
The study of human teeth also helps us to reconstruct diet, but the real
breakthrough in recent years in understanding long-term diet has come from
the analysis of bone collagen. What human bones can reveal about general
health will be examined in Chapter 8.
A meal as a funerary offering: elaborate food
remains, more than 3000 years old, found in
Egyptian New Kingdom tombs at Thebes,
including (front left) unleavened bread on a
woven palm leaf dish; (front center) a bowl of
figs; (front right) a bowl containing sun-dried
fish. The wicker stand holds cooked duck
and loaves of bread.
Individual Meals
stomAch contents. Stomachs survive only rarely in archaeological
contexts, except in bog bodies. Some mummies also provide dietary evidence:
the overweight wife of the Marquis of Dai from second-century bce China,
mentioned above, seems to have died of a heart attack caused by
acute pain from her gallstones an hour or so after enjoying a generous
helping of watermelon (138 melon seeds were discovered in her stomach
and intestines).
When stomachs survive in bog bodies, the dietary evidence they provide
can be of the greatest interest. Pioneering studies of the stomach contents
of Danish Iron Age bogmen showed that Grauballe Man, for instance, had
consumed more than sixty species of wild seeds, together with one or two
cereals and a little meat (as shown by some small bone splinters), while
Tollund Man had eaten only plants. But we should keep in mind that these
results, while fascinating, do not necessarily indicate everyday diet, since these
victims were possibly executed or sacrificed, and thus their last meal may have
been out of the ordinary.
FecAl mAteriAl. Experiments have been done to assess the survival

properties of different foodstuffs relevant to the study of ancient diet, and it
has been found that many organic remains can survive surprisingly well after
their journey through the human digestive tract. Feces themselves survive
only rarely, in very dry sites, such as caves in the western United States and
Mexico, or very wet sites (these feces are often wrongly called coprolites,
Assessing Diet from Human Remains 203

which means fossilized/petrified excrement). But, where they are preserved,
Key Concepts they have proved to be a highly important source of information about what
Assessing Diet from individuals ate in the past.
Human Remains Macroremains can be extremely varied in human excrement, in fact this
variety is an indication of human origin. Bone fragments, plant fibers, bits
Individual Meals: we can find direct of charcoal, seeds, and the remains of fish, birds, and even insects are known.
evidence of what humans in the Shell fragments—from molluscs, eggs, and nuts—can also be identified. Hair
past ate from the examination of can be assigned to certain classes of animals by means of its scale pattern,
preserved stomach contents and
visible under the microscope, and it can thus help us to know which animals
fecal material
were eaten.
Teeth: evidence of wear on human Exceptional conditions at Lovelock Cave, Nevada, have preserved 5000 feces
teeth, which survive well in many dating from 2500 to 150 years ago, and Robert Heizer’s study of their contents
archaeological sediments, can tell yielded remarkable evidence about diet, which seems to have comprised
us about the relative importance
seeds, fish, and birds. Feather fragments were identified from waterfowl,
of meat and plants in past diets
such as the heron and grebe; fish and reptile scales, which pass through the
Isotopic Evidence: this can be used alimentary canal unaltered, also led to identification of several species. Fish
as evidence for long-term human remains were abundant in some of the feces; one, for example, from 1000
diet, but needs to be combined with years ago, contained 5.8 g (0.2 oz) of fish bone, which, it was calculated, came
other evidence for a finer picture
from 101 small chubs, representing a total live weight of 208 g (7.3 oz)—the fish
component of a meal for a single person.
Excrement and fecal residues represent single meals, and therefore provide
short-term data on diet, unless they are found in great quantities, as at Lovelock
Cave, and even there the feces represent only a couple of meals a year. For
human diet over whole lifetimes, we need to turn to the human skeleton itself.
Human Teeth as Evidence for Diet

Teeth survive in extremely good condition, made as they are of the two
hardest tissues in the body, and microscopic examination of the abrasions
on certain dental surfaces can provide evidence for the sort of food that their
owners enjoyed. Abrasive particles in food leave striations on the enamel,
the orientation and length of which are directly related to the meat or
vegetation in the diet and its process of cooking. Modern meat-eating
Greenland Inuit, for instance, have almost exclusively vertical striations
on their lateral tooth surfaces, while largely vegetarian Melanesians have
both vertical and horizontal striations, with a shorter average length.
When these results are compared with data from fossil teeth hundreds
of thousands of years old, it has been found that there is an increase in
horizontal and a decrease in vertical striations, and a decrease in average
striation length over time. In other words, less and less effort was needed to
chew food, and meat may have decreased in importance as the diet became
more mixed: early people crushed and broke down their food with their teeth,
but less chewing was required as cooking techniques developed and improved.
Tooth decay as well as wear will sometimes provide us with dietary
information. Remains of the California Native Americans display very marked
tooth decay, attributed to their habit of leaching the tannin out of acorns, their
staple food, through a bed of sand, which caused excessive tooth abrasion.
Decay and loss of teeth can also set in thanks to starchy and sugary foods.
Dental caries became abundant on the coast of Georgia, United States, in the
twelfth century ce, particularly among the female population. It was in this
period that the transition occurred from hunting, fishing, and gathering to
maize agriculture. Anthropologist Clark Larsen believes that the rise in tooth
decay over this period, revealed by a study of hundreds of skeletons, was
caused by the carbohydrates in maize. Since the women of the group were
more subject to the caries than were the men, it is probable that they were
growing, harvesting, preparing, and cooking the corn, while the men ate more
protein and less carbohydrate.
Isotopic Methods: Diet over a Lifetime

A revolution has been taking place in dietary studies through the realization
that isotopic analysis of human tooth enamel and bone collagen can reveal
a great deal about long-term food intake. The method relies on reading the
chemical signatures left in the body by different foods—we are what we eat.
Plants can be divided into three groups—temperate land plants, tropical
land plants, and marine plants—based on their differing ratios of two carbon
isotopes. As animals eat plants, these different chemical signatures are passed
along the food chain and are eventually fixed in human and animal bone
tissue. They can show whether diet was based on land or marine plants.
Only archaeological evidence, however, can provide more detail about precisely
which species of plants or animals contributed to past diet. Recently, for
example, isotopic analysis of tooth enamel from four Australopithecus africanus
individuals from Makapansgat, South Africa, revealed that they ate not only
fruits and leaves, as had been thought, but also large quantities of grasses
or sedges, or the animals that ate those plants, or both. In other words,
they regularly exploited fairly open environments (woodlands or grasslands)
for food; and since their tooth wear lacks the characteristic scratches of
grass-eaters, it is possible that they were indeed already consuming meat,
by hunting small animals or scavenging larger ones.
Isotope studies have been used to shed light on the disappearance of
the first Norse settlement in Greenland in the fifteenth century. The Norse
settled Greenland from Iceland during a warm period around 1000 ce. The
traditional view was that as the climate became colder, the Norse remained
committed to raising livestock while squandering natural resources like
soil and timber. Meanwhile, the seal-hunting Inuit survived in the very
same environment. Over the last decade, archaeologists have revised this
Assessing Diet from Human Remains 205

In a recent study of the bones of Norse Year (ce): 950 1000 1050 1100 1150 1200 1250 1300 1350 1400 1450 1500
settlers in Greenland, the carbon isotopes
showed clearly the shift to a more marine-
based diet through time, as conditions
worsened between 950 and 1450 ce. Erik the Red explores and Eastern and Western Greenland Western Eastern
possibly names Greenland Settlements founded becomes part of Settlement Settlement
The temperature data here come from Norwegian empire ends ends
studies of oxygen isotopes in ice cores,
and the level of “storminess” is based on the 1°C
measurement of salt particles in ice cores.
TEMPERATURE
Long-term average
-1°C
STORMINESS Average
100%
PROPORTION
OF MARINE 50%
FOOD IN DIET
0%
view, drawing on isotopic analysis. By studying the ratio of carbon and

nitrogen isotopes in human remains, it was possible to see how the Norse
settlers shifted towards a more marine-based diet between 950–1450 ce,
as environmental conditions worsened. These findings challenge the
traditional view that the Norse were inflexible in their subsistence practices,
and suggests that the cause for the collapse of the Greenland settlement
is far more complex than first speculated.
Study Questions
1 What techniques do scientists use to study the environment on

a global scale?
2 How are plant remains used to reconstruct past environments?
3 Why is the question of plant and animal domestication important
to archaeologists?
4 What is the difference between meals and diet?
5 What are some of the complications in determining if humans
have processed animal bones?
6 How can human teeth aid in the study of diet?
Summary
humAnkind hAs develoPed from being an inconsequential species at the
mercy of the environment and the latter’s food resources to one with a huge
influence over its surroundings. The environment is of crucial importance to
archaeology. During every period of the past it has played a vital role in determining
where and how people could live, and on what. Archaeologists now have a battery
of techniques, largely based on the analysis of plant and animal remains, to help
reconstruct such past environments.
Where Food is concerned, the evidence available varies from botanical and
animal remains, large and microscopic, to tools and vessels, plant and animal
residues, and art and texts. We can discover what was eaten, in which seasons,
and sometimes how it was prepared. We need to assess whether the evidence
arrived in the archaeological record naturally or through human actions, and whether
the resources were wild or under human control. Occasionally we encounter the
remains of individual meals left as funerary offerings, or the contents of stomachs
or feces. Finally, the human body itself contains a record of diet in its tooth wear
and in the chemical signatures left in bones by different foods.
mAny oF the techniques must be carried out by specialists, particularly

biochemists, but archaeologists should know how to interpret the results, because
the rewards are enormous for our knowledge of what the environment was like,
what people ate, how they exploited their resources, and in what proportions.
Further Reading O’Connor, T. 2000. The Archaeology

of Animal Bones. Sutton: Stroud.
General introductions to environmental O’Connor, T. & Evans, J. G. 2005.
archaeology and the subject of diet can Environmental Archaeology:
be found in: Principles and Methods (2nd ed.).
Tempus: Stroud.
Barker, G. 2006. The Agricultural Pearsall, D. M. 2015. Paleoethno-
Revolution in Prehistory. Oxford botany: A Handbook of Procedures
University Press: Oxford & New York. (3rd ed.). Left Coast Press: Walnut
Bellwood, P. 2004. First Farmers: The Creek, CA.
Origins of Agricultural Societies. Reitz, E. & Shackley, M. 2012.
Blackwell: Oxford. Environmental Archaeology. Springer:
Brothwell, D. & P. 1997. Food in New York.
Antiquity: A Survey of the Diet of Early Reitz, E. J. & Wing, E. S. 2008.
Peoples. Johns Hopkins University Zooarchaeology (2nd ed.).
Press: Baltimore. Cambridge University Press:
Dincauze, D. F. 2000. Environmental Cambridge & New York.
Archaeology. Cambridge University Smith, B. D. 1998. The Emergence
Press: Cambridge & New York. of Agriculture (2nd ed.). Scientific
Gilbert, R. I. & Mielke, J. H. (eds). 1985. American Library: New York.
The Analysis of Prehistoric Diets.
Academic Press: New York & London. [See p. 345 for a list of useful websites]

7
How Were Artifacts
Made, Used, and
Distributed?
Technology, Trade, and Exchange
Unaltered Materials 210

Stone 210
Wood 213
Plant and Animal Fibers 214
Other Unaltered Materials 214
Synthetic Materials 214

Pottery 215
Metals 216
Trade and Exchange 217

❑ Materials of Prestige Value 218
Discovering the Sources of Traded
Goods: Characterization 220
The Study of Distribution 222
Spatial Analysis of Distribution 224
Exchange and Interaction:
The Complete System 226
❑ Distribution: The Uluburun Wreck 228
Study Questions 230

Summary 231
Further Reading 231
It is the physical remains of humanly made artifacts that form the
bulk of the archaeological record. We have seen how archaeologists can
find and date artifacts, but in this chapter we will start by addressing two
questions of fundamental importance: how were artifacts made, and what
were they used for? There are several approaches to these two questions—
the purely archaeological, the scientific analysis of objects, the ethnographic,
and the experimental.
When assessing ancient technologies, the archaeologist always needs to
bear in mind that the sample preserved may well be biased. During the long
Paleolithic period, for instance, wood and bone artifacts must surely have
rivaled those of stone in importance—as they do in hunting-and-gathering
societies today—but stone tools dominate the archaeological record.
Once made, artifacts usually move around as they are acquired or passed
on between individuals or groups—a phenomenon that can tell us a great
deal about the frequency and extent of contacts between different groups,
as well as about transportation, economics, and so forth. By analyzing where
the materials used to make an artifact came from, as well as the distribution
of artifacts as found by archaeologists, we can reconstruct something of
these trading relationships: who was exchanging goods with whom, and by
what method?
When an archaeologist investigates an object, it must first be decided
whether it was actually made or used by people in the past. For most
periods the answer will be obvious (although we have to beware of fakes
and forgeries), but for the Paleolithic, and especially the Lower Paleolithic,
judgment can be more difficult. Where the very earliest tools are concerned,
on which we would expect the traces of human work to be minimal, the
question is not easy to resolve, since the crudest human working may be
indistinguishable from damage caused by nature.
We will make a convenient distinction in the next section on ancient
technology between two classes of raw material used in creating
7 • How Were Artifacts Made, Used, and Distributed? 209

objects—between those that are largely unaltered, such as flint, and those
that are synthetic, the product of human activities, such as pottery or metal.
Of course, even supposedly unaltered materials have often been treated by
heat or by chemical reactions in order to assist the manufacturing process.
But synthetic materials have undergone an actual change in state, usually
through heat treatment. The human use of fire—pyrotechnology—is a
crucial factor here.
Unaltered Materials
Stone
From the first recognizable tools, dating back about 3.3 million years at
Lomekwi, Kenya, up to the adoption of pottery-making, dated to 20,000 bce
in China, the archaeological record is dominated by stone. How were stone
artifacts, from the smallest stone tools to the greatest stone monuments,
extracted, manufactured, and used?
Much of the stone used for making early tools was probably picked up
from streambeds or other parts of the landscape, but the sources most visible
archaeologically are the mines and quarries. The best-known mines are the
Neolithic and later flint mines in various parts of northern Europe, such as
Grime’s Graves in England, where multiple 15-m- (50-ft.-) deep shafts were
sunk into the chalk to reach the best-quality flint layers; rough estimates
Stone quarry on Easter Island: a giant
suggest that the site could have produced 28 million flint axes. Quarries were
statue lies flat on its back, unfinished and a common source of larger stones for building or monuments. The job of
still attached to the rock face, but at an
advanced stage of manufacture—yielding
the archaeologist is sometimes made easier by the discovery of unfinished
clues as to how it was made. or abandoned stones within or near ancient quarry sites. One of the most
impressive examples is the statue quarry on Easter Island,
where many statues lie in various stages of manufacture.
A combination of archaeological investigation and
modern experimentation can give us valuable insights
into how stones were worked. Here we will concentrate
on stone tool manufacture, although much archaeological
and experimental work is also done on larger stones and
how they were moved, dressed, and fitted.
Stone tool Manufacture and function.

Most stone tools are made by removing material from
a pebble or core until the desired shape has been attained.
The first flakes struck off (primary flakes) bear traces of
the outer surface (cortex). Trimming flakes are then struck
off to achieve the final shape, and certain edges may
then be retouched by further removal of tiny secondary
210 7 • How Were Artifacts Made, Used, and Distributed?

OLDOWAN
The earliest stone tools

were simple choppers
and flakes, such as the
Oldowan industry from
Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania
CHOPPER
ACHEULIAN
The Acheulian hand-axe

evolved over hundreds of
thousands of years into
this symmetrical shape,
with sharp edges achieved
using a bone hammer
HAND-AXE
LEVALLOIS TECHNIQUE
The Levallois technique,

introduced about 100,000
years ago, involved the
careful preparation of a
tortoise-shaped core so
that one usable flake could
LEVALLOIS be struck from it
FLAKE
UPPER PALEOLITHIC
Upper Paleolithic and

later technology made
it possible to remove
numerous parallel-sided
blades from a single
core, using a punch and
hammerstone. The blades
BURIN SCRAPER
were then retouched to
form specialized tools, such
as burins and scrapers
The evolution of stone tools, from the flakes. Although the core is the main implement thus produced, the flakes
earliest, Oldowan technology to the refined
methods of the Upper Paleolithic onward.
themselves may well be used as knives, scrapers, etc. The toolmaker’s work will
have varied in accordance with the type and amount of raw material available.
The history of stone tool technology (illustrated above) shows a
sporadically increasing degree of refinement. The first recognizable tools are

simple choppers and flakes made by knocking pieces off pebbles to obtain
sharp edges. The best-known examples are the so-called Oldowan tools from
Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, the earliest of which date back some 2.6 million
years. After hundreds of thousands of years, people progressed to flaking both
surfaces of the tool, eventually producing the symmetrical Acheulian hand-axe
shape. The next improvement, dating to around 100,000 years ago, came with
the introduction of the Levallois technique—named after the site in a Paris
suburb where it was first identified—where the core was knapped in such
a way that large flakes of predetermined size and shape could be removed.
Around 35,000 years ago, during the Upper Paleolithic period, blade
technology became dominant in some parts of the world. Long, parallel-sided
blades were systematically removed with a punch and hammerstone from
a cylindrical core. This was a great advance, not only because it produced
large numbers of blanks that could be further trimmed and retouched into
a wide range of specialized tools (scrapers, burins, borers), but also because
it was far less wasteful of the raw material, obtaining a much greater total
length of working edges than ever before from a given amount of stone.
This trend toward greater economy reached its peak around 10,000 years ago,
with the rise to dominance of microliths, tiny stone tools, many of which
were probably used as barbs on composite implements.
To find out how a stone tool was made we must try to reconstruct the
sequence of manufacturing steps, and there are two principal approaches
to doing this: replication and refitting. Stone tool replication is a type of
experimental archaeology that involves making exact copies of different
types of stone tool—using only the technology available to the original
makers—in order to assess the processes entailed, and the amount of time
and effort required. Many years of patient practice are required to become
proficient at tool replication.
One specific problem that expert knapper Donald Crabtree was able to
solve through trial and error was how the Paleo-Indians of North America
(Above) How were Paleo-Indian had made their fluted stone tools known as Folsom points, dating to some
Folsom points made? Experiments
by Donald Crabtree showed that the
11,000–10,000 years ago. In particular, how had they removed the “flute” or
flakes were pressed from the core channel flake? This had remained a mystery and experiments with a variety
using a T-shaped crutch.
of techniques met with disappointing results, until the decisive clue was
(Below) Flintknappers have produced found in a seventeenth-century text by a Spanish priest who had seen Aztecs
almost perfect replica points.
make long knife blades from obsidian. The method, as experiments proved,
involves pressing the flake out, downward, by means of a T-shaped crutch
placed against the chest; the tip of the crutch is forced down against a precise
point on the core, which is clamped firm.
Replication cannot usually prove conclusively which techniques were used
in the past, but it does narrow the possibilities and often points to the most
likely method, as in the Folsom example above. Refitting, on the other hand,

Key Concepts
Artifacts Made from Unaltered Materials
Stone: the archaeological record is dominated by stone Plant and Animal Fibers: containers, fabrics, and cords
artifacts. A combination of archaeological investigation, made from plant and animal fibers would also have been
modern experimentation, and ethnographic observation common objects in the past, but, again, they rarely survive
can tell us a great deal about how stone artifacts were in the archaeological record
made and used
Other Materials: bone, antler, shell, and leather are also
Wood: wood does not survive well, apart from in very dry often found by archaeologists, but, along with most other
or waterlogged conditions, but was almost certainly as artifacts made from unaltered materials, we must be careful
important a resource as stone to establish whether an object is actually humanly made,
or whether it has been created by natural processes
involves working with the original tools and demonstrates clearly the precise
chain of actions of the knapper. This entails attempting to put tools and
flakes back together again, like a 3D jigsaw puzzle. The work is tedious
and time-consuming, but when successful can allow us to follow the stages
of the knapper’s craft.
But how can we discover the function of a stone tool? Ethnographic
observation of the use of similar tools in living societies often gives valuable
clues, as do the minute traces of organic residues that can sometimes be
found on tool surfaces; experimentation can also determine which uses
are feasible or most probable. A single tool, however, can be used for many
different purposes—an Acheulian hand-axe could be used for hacking wood
from a tree, for butchering, smashing, scraping, and cutting—and conversely
the same task can be done by many different tools. The only direct proof
of function is to study the minute traces, or microwear patterns, that remain
on the original tools. These minute polishes and marks, only properly visible
using a scanning electron microscope, can be compared against evidence
from modern experiments, and we can deduce the type of material a tool was
used to work (such as wood, bone, hide, or meat) and the type of action used
(such as piercing, cutting, or scraping).
Wood
Wood is one of the most important organic materials, and must have been
used to make tools for as long as stone and bone. Indeed, many prehistoric
stone tools were employed to obtain and work timber. If wood survives
in good condition, it may preserve toolmarks to show how it was worked.
A wide range of wooden tools can survive under special conditions. In the dry
environment of ancient Egypt, for instance, numerous wooden implements
for farming (rakes, hoes, grain scoops, sickles), furniture, weapons, and toys,

such carpentry tools as mallets and chisels, and even whole ships
have come down to us. Egyptian paintings, such as those in the
tomb of the nobleman Rekhmire at Thebes, sometimes depict
carpenters using drills and saws. But it has been waterlogged
wood (including the remains of ships and boats) that has yielded
the richest information about woodworking skills.
Plant and Animal Fibers

The making of containers, fabrics, and cords from skins, bark,
and woven fibers probably dates back to the very earliest
archaeological periods, but these fragile materials rarely survive.
As we saw in Chapter 2, however, they do survive in very dry or
wet conditions. In arid regions, such as Egypt or parts of the New
World, such perishables have come down to us in some quantity,
and the study of basketry and cordage there reveals complex
and sophisticated designs and techniques that display complete
mastery of these organic materials. Waterlogged conditions can
also yield a great deal of fragile evidence.
Where textiles are concerned, the most crucial question is how
they were made, and of what. In the New World, information on
pre-Columbian weaving methods is available from ethnographic
observation, as well as from colonial accounts and illustrations, from
depictions on Moche pottery, and from actual finds of ancient looms and
other objects found preserved in the Peruvian desert. The richest New World
evidence, however, comes from Peruvian textiles themselves, which have
In 1954 the dismantled parts of a cedarwood survived well in the dry conditions. The Andean cultures mastered nearly every
boat were found buried in a pit on the
south side of the Great Pyramid of Cheops
method of textile weaving or decoration now known, and their products were
(Khufu) at Giza, Egypt. One important clue often finer than those of today—indeed, they were some of the best ever made.
to the reconstruction proved to be the four
classifying signs, marked on most of the
timbers, that indicated to which of the four Other Unaltered Materials
quarters of the ship the timbers belonged.
After fourteen years of work, the 1244 pieces
Artifacts made from bone, antler, shell, and leather are also commonly found
of the ship were finally reassembled. on archaeological sites. Microwear analysis—combined with experimental
archaeology—is the most successful means of determining firstly whether
the find really is humanly made (sharp bone points or pierced shells, for
instance, can easily be created by natural processes), as well as reconstructing
manufacturing techniques and deducing function.
Synthetic Materials
It is possible to consider the whole development of technology, as far as it
relates to synthetic materials, in terms of the control of fire: pyrotechnology.
Until very recent times, nearly all synthetic materials depended upon the
control of heat, and the development of new technologies has often been

largely dependent upon achieving higher and higher temperatures under
controlled conditions.
Clearly the first step along this path was the mastery of fire, possible
evidence for which already occurs in the Swartkrans Cave, South Africa, in
layers dating to 1.5 million years ago. Cooked food and preserved meat then
became a possibility, as did the use of heat in working flint, and in hardening
wooden implements, such as the yew spear from the Middle Paleolithic site
of Lehringen, Germany.
A significant development of the Early Neolithic period in the Near East,
around 8000 bce, was the construction of special ovens used both to parch
cereal grains (to facilitate the threshing process) and to bake bread. These
ovens consisted of a single chamber in which the fuel was burnt. When the
oven was hot the fuel was raked out and the grain or unbaked bread placed
inside. This represents the first construction of a deliberate facility to control
the conditions under which the temperature was raised. We may hypothesize
that it was through these early experiences in pyrotechnology that the
possibility of making pottery by firing clay was discovered. Initially pottery
was made by firing in an open fire, but the introduction of the potter’s kiln
Key Concepts meant higher temperatures could be achieved, which also spurred on the
Artifacts Made from development of metallurgy.
Synthetic Materials
Pottery
Many of the developments in pottery
Throughout the earlier periods of prehistory, containers made of light,
and metalworking technology
can be linked to developments
organic materials were probably used. This does not mean, as has often been
in pyrotechnology—the ability to assumed, that Paleolithic people did not know how to make pottery: every
control fire, and attain and maintain fire lit on a cave floor will have hardened the clay around it, and terracotta
ever higher temperatures figurines were sometimes produced. The lack of pottery vessels before
the Neolithic period is mainly a consequence of the mobile way of life of
Pottery: pottery is very hard-wearing
and potsherds are a common find
Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, for whom heavy containers of fired clay would
on archaeological sites. We can have been of limited utility.
learn through simple observation The introduction of pottery generally seems to coincide with the
how pottery was made (either by adoption of a more sedentary way of life, for which vessels and containers
hand or on a wheel) and through
that are durable and strong are a necessity. The almost indestructible
experiment and ethnographic
studies how it was fired
potsherd is as common in later periods as the stone tool is in earlier ones—
and just as some sites yield thousands of stone tools, others contain tons
Metals: we can identify what metal of pottery fragments.
or combination of metals an artifact
is made from with simple laboratory
How were PotS Made? The making or “throwing” of pots on a wheel or
techniques. The examination of the
microscopic structure of the metal
turntable was only introduced after 3400 bce at the earliest (in Mesopotamia),
can give clues as to how an artifact but in the New World only after European contact. The previous method, still
was manufactured used in some parts of the world, was to build the vessel up by hand in a series
of coils or slabs of clay. A simple examination of the interior and exterior
Synthetic Materials 215

surfaces of a pot usually allows us to identify the method
of manufacture. Wheel-thrown pots generally have a telltale
spiral of ridges and marks that is absent from handmade
wares. These marks are left by the fingertips as the potter
draws the vessel up on the turntable.
The firing technique can be inferred from certain
characteristics of the finished product. For example, if the
surfaces are vitrified or glazed (i.e. have a glassy appearance),
the pot was fired at more than 900°C (1652°F) and probably
in an enclosed kiln. The extent of oxidization in a pot
(the process by which organic substances in the clay are
burnt off) is also indicative of firing methods. Complete
oxidization produces a uniform color throughout the
paste. If the core of a sherd is dark (gray or black), the firing
temperature was too low to oxidize the clay fully, or the
duration of the firing was insufficient, factors that often
point to the use of an open kiln. Experimental firing of
different pastes at different temperatures and in various
types of kiln provides a guide to the colors and effects
that can be expected.
Unlike the making of stone tools, the production
of pottery by traditional methods is still widespread
in the world, so a good deal can be learned from
Evidence for pot-making using a wheel. ethnoarchaeological studies not only about the technological aspects
An Egyptian potter shapes a vessel on
a turntable-type wheel in this limestone
but also about the use and trade of pottery.
portrait of c. 2400 bce.
Metals
The study of ancient metal artifacts and manufacturing processes is known
as archaeometallurgy. Many of the advances in metalworking techniques
made in the past were dependent on the ability to achieve and control ever
higher temperatures.
non-ferrouS MetalS. The most important non-ferrous metal—that is, one

not containing iron—used in early times was copper. In due course people
learned that a harder, tougher product could be made by alloying the copper
with tin to produce bronze. Other elements, notably arsenic and antimony,
were sometimes used in the alloying process; and in the later Bronze Age of
Europe it was realized that a small amount of lead would improve the casting
qualities. Gold and silver were also important, as was lead itself.
The techniques of manufacture of artifacts made from these materials can
be investigated in several ways. The first point to establish is composition.
Traditional laboratory methods readily allow the identification of major

constituents. For instance, the alloys present in bronze may be identified in
this way. In practice, however, it is now more usual to utilize the techniques
of trace-element analysis (see pp. 221–22). The other essential approach is
metallographic examination, when the structure of the material is examined
microscopically. This will determine whether an artifact has been formed by
cold-hammering, annealing, casting, or a combination of these methods.
iron. Iron was not used in the New World during pre-Columbian times, and
made its appearance in quantity in the Old World with the beginning in the
Near East of the Iron Age around 1000 bce. Once the technique of smelting
iron was well understood, it became very important, since iron is more widely
found in nature than is copper. But it is much more difficult to reduce—i.e. to
separate from oxygen, with which it is found combined in nature in the form
of iron oxides—requiring temperatures of about 800°C (1472°F).
It is clearly important and interesting to identify what an artifact is made
of, how it was made, and what it was used for. But once an artifact has been
created, it takes on a life of its own—not only in terms of being used, broken,
or discarded, but also in terms of being transported, bought, or exchanged.
The study of these processes teaches us a great deal about past human
societies and how they operated. In the next section we will discuss what
can be learned from the study of trade and exchange, and examine some
methods for investigating the movements of different kinds of materials.
Trade and Exchange

Societies and economies depend upon exchanges—of information and of
actual goods—between individuals and between organizations. Every social
transaction implies some interaction between people, and the study of the
movement and flow of goods in the course of exchange transactions is often
the most direct way for the archaeologist to monitor such interactions.
In many exchanges the relationship is more important than what is
exchanged. In the Christian tradition, for instance, when presents are
exchanged within a family at Christmas, the giving of presents between
relatives is generally more important than the actual objects: “it’s the thought
that counts.” There are also different kinds of exchange relationship: some
where generosity is the order of the day (as in the family Christmas); others
where the aim is profit, and the personal relationship is not emphasized.
Moreover, there are different kinds of goods: everyday commodities that
are bought and sold; and special goods, valuables (see box overleaf), that are
suitable as gifts.
When diffusionist explanations were popular in archaeology, some
fifty years ago, the presence of objects of foreign type or material at an
archaeological site was often thought to indicate significant “influence”

Materials of
Prestige Value material (although it is bright, and does
not tarnish), nor is it the product of
• Shell, especially of large marine
molluscs, has been highly prized
any special skills of the craftsperson. in many cultures for millennia.
Intrinsic value is a misnomer: the
Aztecs valued feathers more highly, • The very special organic material
Nearly all cultures have valuables. unlike the Conquistadors, who craved amber was valued in Upper Paleolithic
Although some of these are useful gold; both were following subjective times in northern Europe.
(e.g. pigs in Melanesia, which can be systems of value. When we survey the
eaten), most of them have no use at range of materials to which different • Jade is a favored material in many
all, other than display. They are simply societies have ascribed intrinsic value cultures, from China to Mesoamerica,
prestige objects. we can see that many of them had the and was valued as long ago as
Valuables tend to be in a limited range qualities of rarity, of durability, and of 4000 bce in Neolithic Europe.
of materials to which a particular society being visually conspicuous:
ascribes a high value. For instance, in • Other naturally hard and colorful
our own society gold is so highly valued • The bright feathers favored by the stones (e.g. rock crystal, lapis lazuli,
as to be a standard against which all Aztecs and by tribes of New Guinea obsidian, quartz, and onyx) have
other values are measured. fulfill two of these qualities. always been valued.
We tend to forget that this valuation
is entirely arbitrary, speaking of gold’s • Ivory: elephant and walrus tusks have • Gemstones have taken on a special
intrinsic value, as if in some way it were been valued since Upper Paleolithic value in recent centuries, when
inherent. But gold is not a very useful times. the technique of cutting them
to a faceted, light-catching shape
was developed.
• Gold has perhaps pride of place

(certainly in European eyes) among
“intrinsically” valuable commodities,
followed by silver.
• Copper and other metals have taken

a comparable role: in North America
copper objects had a special value.
• With the development of

pyrotechnology, artificial materials
such as faience and glass came into
full prominence.
• The finest textiles and other clothing

materials (e.g. tapa, bark cloth, in
Polynesia) have also always been
highly valued, for prestige often
means personal display.
(Left) A jade mask from Palenque, Mexico,

found in Lord Pakal’s tomb.
Prestige objects (clockwise from
above right): woven silk robe from
the reign of the Chinese Qianlong
Emperor (1735–96), bearing the
imperial dragon; sculpted ivory
bison from Zaraisk in Russia, colored
with red ocher, c. 22,000 years old;
gold mask thought by Schliemann
to represent King Agamemnon,
from a shaft grave at Mycenae, late
sixteenth century bce; Mississippian
shell pendant (c. 14 cm) from Texas,
showing a panther and bird of
prey; embossed copper face, with
typical forked-eye motif, from North
America’s Mississippian culture
(c. 900–1450 ce); the Portland vase,
a superb example of first-century
ce Roman glassworking; feathered
headdress of the Aztec emperor
Motecuhzoma (Moctezuma) II.
Materials of Prestige Value 219

from other, perhaps more advanced, cultures. Today, however, we are more
interested in finding out what those objects can tell us about social and
economic interactions between distant groups. But the mere resemblance in
the form of an artifact with those found elsewhere is not usually enough to
be sure an exchange has occurred or that there is a definite link between two
groups. We must show that the actual material the artifact is made from must
have come from a distant source, and we can do this by characterization.
Discovering the Sources of Traded Goods: Characterization

The discovery of an artifact at a particular location does not mean that it
originated in that place: it may, in fact, have been brought over hundreds
or even thousands of miles. The study of where artifacts originated is
not simple: artifact forms can be imitated, or can resemble each other by
chance. So it is not always safe to recognize an import in an archaeological
context just because it resembles objects that are known to have been made
elsewhere. Much more reliable evidence for trade can be provided if the
raw material from which the object is made can be reliably shown to have
originated elsewhere. Characterization, or sourcing, refers to those techniques
of examination by which characteristic properties of the constituent material
may be identified, and so allow the source of that material to be determined.
Some of the main methods for sourcing of materials by characterization are
described below.
For characterization to work, there must obviously be something about
the source of the material that distinguishes its products from those coming
from other sources. Of course, sometimes a material is so unusual and
distinctive in itself that it can at once be recognized as deriving from a given
source. But in practice, there are very few materials for which the different
sources can be distinguished by eye. Usually, it is necessary to use scientific
techniques that allow a much more precise description of the material.
During the past forty years there have been striking advances in the ability
to analyze very small samples with accuracy. A successful characterization,
however, does not just depend on analytical precision: sources of some
materials (e.g. flint, or some metals) are often very similar and so cannot
be distinguished whatever the precision of the testing. For other materials
(e.g. obsidian), the sources are all quite different and can be distinguished
relatively easily.
An important point to note is that the sourcing of materials by
characterization studies depends crucially on our knowledge of the
distribution of the raw materials in nature. This comes mainly from the
fieldwork of such specialists as geologists. For example, we might have
a good knowledge of the exact kinds of rock a whole range of stone axes
were made from, but this would not help us unless we could match those

particular kinds of rock with their specific occurrences in nature (i.e. the
quarries). Thus, good geological mapping is a necessary basis for a sound
sourcing study.
MicroScoPic tHin-Section analySiS. Since the middle of the nineteenth

century techniques have existed for cutting a thin section of a sample taken
from a stone object or a potsherd to determine the source of the material. It
is made thin enough to transmit light, and then, by means of petrological
examination (studying the rock or mineral structure) with a light microscope,
it is usually possible to recognize specific minerals that may be characteristic
of a specific source. This part of the work has to be done by someone with
petrological training.
This method has been applied to stone objects in different parts of the
world—to pinpoint the sources of building stones (e.g. the special colored
stones used by the ancient Greeks and Romans), monuments (e.g. Olmec
heads, Stonehenge), and portable artifacts, such as stone axes (e.g. in
Australia and New Guinea). One of the success stories of characterization
studies is the analysis of the patterns of trade in stone axes in Neolithic times
in Britain, which started before 3000 bce.
With pottery, the clay itself may be distinctive, but more often it is the
inclusions—particles of minerals or rock fragments—that are characteristic.
Sometimes the inclusions are naturally present in the clay. In other cases,
the inclusions are deliberately added as temper to improve drying and firing
qualities, and this can complicate characterization studies, since the pottery
Key Concepts fabric may then consist of material from two or more separate sources.
Characterization Fossil constituents, such as diatoms (see pp. 183–84) can also be an aid to
identification of the source of the raw materials.
Characterization allows The picture of the prehistoric trade in pottery in Britain that such work
archaeologists to discover the has documented is quite surprising. Until the thin-section analysis of David
source of the material from which Peacock and his associates it was simply not realized that pottery bowls
an artifact was made
and other vessels might be traded over quite long distances (of the order
Successful characterization
of 100 km (62 miles)) in Neolithic times, before 3000 bce. Now that we know
depends on all the sources of a the extent of this exchange of pottery, and that of stone axes discussed above,
material being sufficiently different it is clear that many individuals and settlements were linked by quite far-
so as to be distinguishable through flung exchange systems.
scientific analysis
The main methods for sourcing

trace-eleMent analySiS. The basic composition of many materials is very
materials by characterization consistent. Obsidian, a volcanic glass used in the manufacture of chipped
are microscopic thin-section stone tools in the same manner as flint, is a good example of this. The
analysis, trace-element analysis, concentration of the main elements of which obsidian is formed (silicon,
and isotopic analysis
oxygen, calcium, etc.) is broadly similar whatever the source of the material.
The trace elements (elements present only in very small quantities, measured

in just a few parts per million) do vary according to the source, however, and
there are a variety of useful methods for measuring their concentration.
When obsidian from New Britain and the Admiralty Islands in the Pacific
was examined using trace-element analysis, it was found that obsidian from
one source in New Britain (Talasea) was being traded as far as Fiji to the east
and Sabah (northern Borneo) to the west, a distance of 6500 km (4000 miles),
about 3000 years ago. This is surely the widest distribution of any commodity
in the global Neolithic record.
iSotoPic analySiS. Atoms of the same element, but with different numbers
of neutrons in the nucleus, are called isotopes. Most elements occurring in
nature consist of a number of isotopes. Particularly when we are investigating
metal sources, we can analyze the sources (as well as the artifacts we are
investigating) for the presence of different proportions of lead isotopes in
order to characterize them. Sometimes more than one source can have the
same isotope ratios, but this can usually be resolved by consideration of
trace-element data.
Lead isotope analysis is of direct use not only for lead artifacts, but also
for those of silver, in which lead is usually present as an impurity. Copper
sources also contain at least a trace of lead, and it has been shown by
experimentation that a large proportion of that lead passes into the copper
metal produced during smelting. Here, then, is a characterization method
applicable to lead, silver, and copper artifacts. It has been used successfully
for the determination of mineral sources of Classical and medieval silver
coins, Bronze Age copper and bronze tools, lead weights, as well as lead in
pigments of glasses and glazes, and lead-based white paint.
Oxygen isotope ratios have also proved useful for the characterization
of marine shell. The shell of Spondylus gaederopus was widely traded in the
form of bracelets and decorations during the Neolithic in southeastern
Europe. Archaeologists needed to know whether it came from the Aegean,
or possibly from the Black Sea. As discussed in the section on deep-sea cores
in Chapter 6, the oxygen isotopic composition of marine shell is dependent
on the local temperature of the sea. The Black Sea is much colder than the
Mediterranean, and analysis confirmed that the shells in question came
from the Aegean.
The Study of Distribution

The study of the traded goods themselves, and the identification of their
sources by means of characterization, are the most important procedures
in the investigation of exchange. But it is the study of distribution, or the
movement of goods, that allows us to get to the heart of the matter—how
societies operated and how they interrelated socially and economically.

FRANCE
Stamp of
Sestius
Bibracte Basel
Poitiers
Amphora
Lezoux
Luni (Left) A distribution study. Roman storage

containers (amphorae) bearing the stamp of
ITALY
the potter Sestius (above) have been found in
northern Italy and widely throughout central
Grand Conglué and southern France. They and their contents
Ampurias Cosa (probably wine) were probably made on an
Findspots of amphorae estate near Cosa. The distribution map thus
with stamp of Sestius Medit rranean Sea indicates the general pattern of the export from
e
the Cosa area of this commodity.
In the absence of written records it is not easy to determine what were

the mechanisms of distribution, or what was the nature of the exchange
relationship. Where such records exist they can be most informative. Earlier
evidence from pre-literate societies—societies without written records—can,
however, give some clear idea of ownership and of the managed distribution
of goods. For example, clay sealings, used to stopper jars, to secure boxes,
and to seal the doors of storehouses, and distinguished by the impression
of a carved seal, are widely found in the pre-literate phases in the Near East,
and in the Aegean Bronze Age.
In some cases, however, the traded goods themselves were marked by
their owner or producer. For instance, the potters who produced storage
containers (amphorae) in Roman times used to stamp their name on the
rim. The general pattern of export can be made clear by the production
of a distribution map.
But a distribution map must be interpreted if we are to understand the
processes that lay behind it. At this point it is useful to consider how the
spatial distribution of finds may depend on the exchange mechanism—
or in other words, what can the pattern of distribution of finds tell us about
the type of exchange that was occurring? The different mechanisms can be
summarized as follows:
• “Direct access”: the user goes directly to the source of the material,
without the intervention of any exchange mechanism.
• “Down-the-line” exchange: repeated exchanges characterized by
reciprocity, so that a commodity travels across successive territories
through successive exchanges.

• “Freelance (middleman)” trading: traders operate independently and
for gain. Usually the traders work by bargaining, but instead of a fixed
marketplace they are travelers who take goods to the consumer.
• “Emissary” trading: the “trader” is a representative of a central organization
based in the home country.
Not all of these types of transaction can be expected to leave clear and
unmistakable indications in the archaeological record, although, as we shall
see, down-the-line trading apparently does. And a former port of trade ought
to be recognizable if the materials found there come from a wide range of
sources, and it is clear that the site was not principally an administrative
center, but was specialized in trading activities.
Spatial Analysis of Distribution

Several formal techniques are available for the study of distribution. The first
and most obvious technique is naturally that of plotting the distribution
map for finds, as in the case of the stamped Roman amphorae mentioned
on the previous page. Quantitative studies of distributions are also helpful;
the size of the dot or some other feature can be used as a simple device to
indicate the number of finds on the map. This kind of map can give a good
indication of important centers of consumption and of redistribution. Direct
use of distribution maps, even when aided by quantitative plotting, may not,
however, be the best way of studying the data, and more thorough analysis
may be useful.
Recently, there has been a considerable focus of interest in fall-off
analysis. The quantity of a traded material usually declines as the distance
Key Concepts from the source increases. This is not really very surprising, but in some cases
Distribution (such as when a particular type of trade is happening) there are regularities
in the way in which the decrease occurs. If the quantities of material are
Analysis of the spatial distribution
plotted against the distance from source on a graph, a fall-off curve is
of finds can help us to understand
the exchange mechanisms that created. Although different mechanisms of distribution sometimes produce
were operating in the past comparable end results, down-the-line trading, for instance, produces a quite
distinctive exponential curve (which on a logarithmic scale is represented
The main different exchange by a straight line, as in the example opposite).
mechanisms can be summarized
as: direct access; down-the-line
exchange; freelance trading; and Distribution stuDies of obsiDian. A good example is the obsidian
emissary trading found at early Neolithic sites in the Near East (see illustration opposite).
Characterization studies pinpointed two sources in central Anatolia and
Quantitative studies, for example two in eastern Anatolia. Samples were obtained from most of the known
fall-off analysis, can give a statistical
early Neolithic sites in the Near East, dating from the seventh and sixth
indication of which method was
in use millennia bce. A rather clear picture emerged with the central Anatolian
obsidians being traded in the Levant area (down to Palestine), while those

100
The obsidian trade in the Near East. 80 Mersin Tell Shemshara
Characterization studies revealed that early Çatalhöyük
OBSIDIAN IN CHIPPED-STONE INDUSTRY (PERCENT)

50 Jarmo
Neolithic villages in Cyprus, Anatolia, and
the Levant obtained their obsidian from
two sources in central Anatolia, while such Tell al-Judaidah Bouqras
villages as Jarmo and Ali Kosh depended on
two sources in Armenia (eastern Anatolia). 10
At sites relatively close to the sources (e.g. Tepe Guran
Çatalhöyük), obsidian formed 80 percent
5
of the chipped stone tools, suggesting that
within this “supply zone” (inner lines on the
distribution map below) people collected Sarab
obsidian directly from the source. Beyond Ali Kosh
this zone the fall-off curves (right) were Tell Ramad Jericho
1
indicative of down-the-line trade.
Khirokitia (Cyprus) Byblos
0.5
Black Sea
Beidha
0.1
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
DISTANCE FROM SOURCE (km)
Nemrut Dag
Bingol Lake Van
Acigöl Çayönü
Tell Shemshara
Çiftlik
Jarmo
Çatalhöyük Matarrah
Sarab
Mersin Tell al-Judaidah Tepe Guran
Bouqras
Ras Shamra Ali Kosh
CYPRUS
Khirokitia Byblos
Tell Ramad
Mediterranean Sea 400 miles
Jericho 640 km
N SOURCE SITE
Armenian obsidian
Beidha
Anatolian obsidian
of eastern Anatolia were mostly traded down the Zagros mountain range
to sites in Iran, such as Ali Kosh.
A quantitative distributional study revealed a pattern of fall-off that
indicated down-the-line trade. It could therefore be concluded that obsidian
was being handed on down from village settlement to village settlement.
Only in the area close to the sources (within 320 km (200 miles))—termed
the supply zone—was there evidence that people were going direct to the
source to collect their own obsidian. Outside that area—within what has been
termed the contact zone—the exponential fall-off indicates a down-the-line
system. There is no indication of specialist middleman traders at this time,
nor does it seem that there were central places that had a dominant role in
the supply of obsidian.

SHiPwreckS and HoardS: trade by Sea and land. A different approach
to distribution questions is provided by the study of transport. Travel by
water was often much safer, quicker, and less expensive than travel by land.
The best source of information, both for questions of transport and for the
crucial question of what commodity was traded against what, and on which
scale, is offered by shipwrecks. From earlier times, for instance, complete
cargoes of the Roman amphorae discussed on p. 223 have been recovered.
Our knowledge of marine trade has been greatly extended by George Bass’s
investigations of two important Bronze Age shipwrecks off the south coast
of Turkey, at Cape Gelidonya and Uluburun (see box overleaf).
The terrestrial equivalent of the shipwreck is the trader’s cache or
hoard. When substantial assemblages of goods are found in archaeological
deposits, it is not easy to be clear about the intentions of those who left
them there: some hoards evidently had a votive character, left perhaps as
offerings to deities, but those with materials for recycling, such as scrap
metal, may well have been buried by itinerant smiths who intended to
return and retrieve them.
In such cases, particularly with a well-preserved shipwreck, we come
as close as we shall ever do to understanding the nature of distribution.
Exchange and Interaction: The Complete System

The archaeological evidence is rarely sufficient to permit the reconstruction
of a complete exchange system. It is extremely difficult, for example,
to establish without written records what was traded against what, and which
particular values were ascribed to each commodity. Furthermore, exchange
in perishable materials will have left little or no trace in the archaeological
record. In most cases, all we can hope to do is to fit together the evidence
about sources and distribution that can be established archaeologically.
A good example of such a project is the work of Jane Pires-Ferreira in
Oaxaca, Mexico.
an excHange SySteM in ancient Mexico. Pires-Ferreira studied five

materials used in Oaxaca during the Early and Middle Formative periods
(1450–500 bce). The first was obsidian, of which some nine sources were
identified. These were characterized and the relevant networks were
established. Pires-Ferreira then proceeded to consider exchange networks
for another material, mother-of-pearl shell, and concluded that two different
networks were in operation here, one bringing marine material from the
Pacific coast, the other material from freshwater sources in the rivers draining
into the Atlantic.
For her next study she considered the iron ore (magnetite) used to
manufacture mirrors in the Formative period. Finally, she was able to bring

Barranca de los
Estetes
Guadalupe
Valley of Victoria
Mexico
Valley
Morelos of Tehuacán
Valley of
Puebla
Southern Veracruz
Mixteca Alta
Obsidian source
Tehuantepec Plain
Xochiltepec White
pottery Valley of
Pacific Coast of
Oaxaca
Delfina Fine Gray Chiapas
pottery
Obsidian
N
Magnetite
200 miles El Chayal
Marine shell 300 km
The complete system: Jane Pires-Ferreira’s into consideration two classes of pottery, the area of manufacture of which
map, which shows some of the commodities
that linked regions of Early Formative
(in Oaxaca and in Veracruz, respectively) could be determined stylistically.
Mesoamerica from the study of five These results were then fitted together onto a single map, showing some of
different materials.
the commodities that linked regions of Mesoamerica in the Early Formative
period into several exchange networks. The picture is evidently incomplete,
and it does not offer any notion of the relative values of the traded goods.
But it does make excellent use of the available characterization data, and
undertakes a preliminary synthesis of the area’s exchange networks that
is securely based on the archaeological evidence.
SyMbolic excHange and interaction. Interaction involves the exchange

not only of material goods but also of information, which includes ideas,
symbols, inventions, aspirations, and values. Modern archaeology has been
able to learn quite a lot about material exchanges, using characterization
studies and spatial analyses, but it has been more difficult to identify and
explain the more symbolic aspects of interaction.
While similar innovations separated by long distances should not
be used as indicators of contact in the absence of other evidence, the
development of a striking new technology, making its appearance at
a number of locations over a limited area, usually indicates the flow
of information and hence contact.
In the past archaeologists talked of “diffusion” when they discussed
interactions between neighboring areas. The term implied that one area was
dominant over the other, and that new technologies passed down to the

Distribution: already known from wall paintings in The exotic goods included lengths
Egypt and from finds in Cyprus, Crete, of a wood resembling ebony, which
The Uluburun and elsewhere. The copper for these grew in Africa south of Egypt. Then
Wreck ingots was almost certainly mined on
the island of Cyprus (as suggested
there were Baltic amber beads,
which came originally from northern
by lead-isotope analysis, and trace- Europe (and that probably reached
element analysis). Also of particular the Mediterranean overland). There
importance are nearly a ton of ingots was also ivory in the form of elephant
and other objects of tin found on the and hippopotamus tusks, possibly
It is difficult for the archaeologist to seafloor in the remains of the cargo. from the eastern Mediterranean,
learn what commodity was traded The source of the tin used in the
against what other commodity, and Mediterranean at this time is not yet
to understand the mechanics of trade. clear. It seems evident that at the time
The discovery of the shipwreck of a of the shipwreck, the vessel was sailing
trading vessel, complete with cargo, westward from the east Mediterranean
is thus of particular value. coast, and taking with it tin, from some
In 1982, just such a wreck, dating eastern source, as well as copper
from close to 1300 bce, was found from Cyprus.
at Uluburun, near Kaş, off the south The pottery included Canaanite
Turkish coast in 43 m (141 ft.) to 60 m amphorae, so called because they were
(198 ft.) of water. It was excavated made in Palestine or Syria (the land
between 1984 and 1994 by George of Canaan). Most held turpentine-like
Bass and Cemal Pulak of the Institute resin from the terebinth tree, but several
of Nautical Archaeology in Texas. contained olives, and another glass
The ship’s cargo contained about beads. Similar jars have been found in
10 tons of copper in the form of more Greece, Egypt, and especially along the
than 350 of the four-handled ingots Levantine coast.
(Above) Three striking objects

(Baltic amber)
from the wreck (clockwise from
left): a bronze statuette of a female
deity, partly clad in gold foil, that
may have been the ship’s protective
ITA
Black Sea goddess; a boxwood diptych

LY
(object with folding plates) with

Copper
ivory hinges, and with recesses
to hold beeswax writing surfaces;
SARDINIA
and a gold pendant showing an
GREECE unknown goddess with a gazelle
Aegean ANATOLIA in each upraised hand.
SICILY Mycenaean Sea Stone anchor
vase
• Tin
Mycenae
Kaş
M •
ed + Unworked
ite Uluburun ivory
rr
an CRETE CYPRUS
ea Cypriot
n S
ANT
N ea pottery
(Left) The map shows the
LEV
Stone Glass
anchor Copper probable route of the ill-fated
ship found at Uluburun. Also
200 miles
indicated are likely sources of
250 km Canaanite
EGYPT (Ebony) amphora materials for the various artifacts
found on board the wreck.

and ostrich eggshells that probably further north, as hinted by the discovery
came from North Africa or Syria. Bronze on the wreck of spears and a ceremonial
tools and weapons from the wreck scepter/mace from the Danube region
show a mixture of types that include of the Black Sea. Then, profiting from
Egyptian, Levantine, and Mycenaean seasonal winds, it would head south
forms. Among other important finds across the open sea to the coast of
were several cylinder seals of Syrian North Africa, east to the mouth of the
and Mesopotamian types, ingots of Nile and Egypt, and, finally, home again
glass (at that time a special and costly to Phoenicia. On this occasion, however,
material), and a chalice of gold. the crew lost their ship, their cargo, and
This staggering treasure gives a possibly their lives at Uluburun.
glimpse into Bronze Age trade in the
Mediterranean. Bass and Pulak consider
it likely that the ship started its final
voyage on the Levantine coast. Its usual
circuit probably involved sailing across
to Cyprus, then along the Turkish coast,
past Kaş and west to Crete, or, more
likely, to one of the major Mycenaean (Right) Divers working on
sites on the Greek mainland, or even the four-handled ingots.
subordinate area. The opposite approach would be to consider different areas

as completely autonomous and independent. But it seems unrealistic to
exclude the possibility of significant interactions between different groups.
The solution is to seek ways of analyzing interactions, including their
symbolic components, that do not make assumptions about dominance
and subordination, core and periphery, but consider different areas as on
a more or less equal footing. When discussing such interactions between
independent societies of equal status, it has been found useful to speak
of interaction spheres.
One major interaction sphere is competition. Neighboring areas
compete with one another in various ways, judging their own success
against that of their neighbors. This often takes a symbolic form in periodic
meetings at some major ceremonial centers where representatives of the
various areas meet, celebrate rituals, and sometimes compete in games
and other enterprises.
Such behavior is seen among hunter-gatherer bands, which meet
periodically in larger units (at what in Australia are called corroborees).
It is seen also in the pilgrimages and rituals of state societies, most
conspicuously in ancient Greece at the Olympic Games and at other
Panhellenic assemblies, when representatives of all the city states would meet.
At such gatherings there is a tendency for one society to try to outdo
its neighbors in conspicuous consumption, such as in the expensive

public feasts of the Northwest Coast Native Americans, the institution
of the potlatch. Very similar in some ways is the erection of magnificent
monuments at regional ceremonial centers, each outdoing its neighbor in
scale and grandeur. Something similar may have occurred in the ceremonial
centers of Maya cities, and the same phenomenon is seen in the magnificent
cathedrals in the capital cities of medieval Europe.
Warfare is, of course, an obvious form of competition. But the object of the
competition is not necessarily to gain territory—for example, it might also
be used to capture prisoners for sacrifice. It operated under well-understood
rules, and was as much a form of interaction as the others listed here.
Innovations can also be transmitted—naturally a technical advance
made in one area will soon spread to other areas. And there may also
be a ceremonial exchange of valuables: although we have emphasized
non-material (i.e. symbolic) interactions here, it is certainly the case that
between the elites of different societies there may also be a series of material
exchanges—the transfer of marriage partners and of valuable gifts. At the
same time, large-scale exchanges between participating societies of everyday
commodities should not, of course, be overlooked. Economies in some cases
Potlatch ceremony at Sitka, Alaska, on became linked together.
December 9, 1904, with Tlingit chiefs
dressed in their ceremonial finery. Such
Such concepts, where as much emphasis is laid on symbolic aspects as on
occasions involved the elaborate display the physical exchange of material goods, can profitably be used to analyze
of wealth and the public destruction of
valuable items to manifest the high status
interactions in most early societies and cultures. Systematic analysis of this
of their owners. kind has, however, so far been rare in archaeology.
Study Questions
1 What are some of the differences between unaltered and synthetic

materials?
2 How is experimental archaeology used in the study of stone tools?
3 What is characterization and how does it aid in the study of ancient trade?
4 What are the four main types of exchange mechanisms and how do
they differ?
5 What are some of the common qualities of valuables?
6 What is fall-off analysis and how does it relate to the study of distribution?

Summary
in tHiS cHaPter we have highlighted some basic questions about early
technology, and considered how to find answers to them. First, one must assess
whether an object is indeed an artifact, and then of what material—unaltered
(primarily stone, wood, fibers) or synthetic (pottery, metals). Ethnography and
archaeological context may suggest the function of a tool; but only analysis
of its microwear or residues can demonstrate its likely use. Nevertheless,
ethnoarchaeology is proving extremely valuable.
StudieS of cHaracterization—i.e. the sources of the raw materials that make

up artifacts—have been of enormous importance in archaeology, by shedding
light on technological processes, and contact and trade between different regions
and cultures. Thin-section analysis, as well as trace-element analysis and isotopic
analysis, have played a major role in these investigations.
once an underStanding of the whole process of making and using the artifacts
has been attained, we can turn to their distribution—the spatial analysis of their
places of manufacture and discovery, and hence the exchange and transportation
systems that have caused these distribution patterns to come about.
Further Reading
Broad surveys of ancient technology, Lambert, J. B. 1997. Traces of the
trade, and exchange include: Past: Unraveling the Secrets of
Archaeology Through Chemistry.
Cuomo, S. 2007. Technology and Helix Books/Addison-Wesley
Culture in Greek and Roman Longman: Reading, MA.
Antiquity. Cambridge University Nicholson, P. & Shaw, I. (eds). 2009.
Press: Cambridge & New York. Ancient Egyptian Materials and
Earle, T. K. & Ericson, J. E. (eds). 1977. Technology. Cambridge University
Exchange Systems in Prehistory. Press: Cambridge & New York.
Academic Press: New York & London. Scarre, C. & Healy, F. (eds). 1993.
Ericson, J. E. & Earle, T. K. (eds). 1982. Trade and Exchange in Prehistoric
Contexts for Prehistoric Exchange. Europe. Oxbow Monograph 33: Oxford.
Academic Press: New York & London. Torrence, R. 2009. Production and
Fagan, B. M. (ed.). 2004. The Seventy Exchange of Stone Tools: Prehistoric
Great Inventions of the Ancient Obsidian in the Aegean. Cambridge
World. Thames & Hudson: London University Press: Cambridge
& New York. & New York.
Forbes, R. J. (series). Studies in Ancient
Technology. E. J. Brill: Leiden. [See p. 345 for a list of useful websites]

8 What Were They Like?
The Bioarchaeology of People
The Variety of Human Remains 233
Identifying Physical
Attributes 234
Which Sex? 235
❑ Grauballe Man: The Body in the
Bog 236
How Long Did They Live? 237
What Did They Look Like? 239
How Were They Related? 241
Where Did They Come from? 242
Disease, Deformity, and

Death 244
Evidence in Soft Tissue 245
❑ Richard III Rediscovered 246
Skeletal Evidence for Deformity
and Disease 247
Diet and Nutrition 248

Malnutrition 248
Cannibalism 249
Study Questions 250

Summary 251
Further Reading 251
One of archaeology’s principal aims is to recreate the lives of the people
who produced the archaeological record, and what more direct evidence can
there be than the physical remains of past humanity? In the next chapter
we will see how archaeology can help us to understand the ways in which
ancient people thought, but we have much more tangible evidence—complete
skeletons, bones, bone fragments, and sometimes corpses that have been
preserved in special circumstances—that enables us to reconstruct the physical
attributes of past individuals and groups. If sufficient remains have survived,
archaeologists can determine, for example, the sex and age of an individual,
perhaps how that person died, and even his or her physical appearance. The
study of such human remains is known as bioarchaeology; the topic also
raises ethical issues, and these are examined in Chapter 11.
The Variety of Human Remains

How does the archaeologist know that human remains are present? This is
Plaster, poured into the cavity left by the
body, recreates the shape of a Pompeiian
relatively easy where intact bodies, complete skeletons, or skulls are found.
struck down in flight. Individual bones and large fragments can usually be reliably identified as
human. In cases of fragmentary multiple burials or cremations, the minimum
number of individuals can be assessed from the part of the body that is most
abundant. Even small fragments may include diagnostic features. In some
recent, careful excavations, individual hairs have been recovered that can be
identified under the microscope as human.
Even where the physical remains of a body have disappeared, evidence may
sometimes survive. The best-known examples are the hollows left by the
bodies of the people of Pompeii as they disintegrated inside their hardened
casing of volcanic ash. Modern plaster casts of these bodies show not only the
general physical appearance, hairstyles, clothing, and posture, but also even
such fine and moving detail as the facial expression at the moment of death.
Nevertheless the vast majority of human remains are in the form of actual
skeletons and bone fragments, which yield a wide range of information, as we
8 • What Were They Like? 233

shall see. Indirect physical evidence about people also comes from ancient art,
and provides important clues about what people looked like.
Identifying Physical Attributes

Once the presence and abundance of human remains have been established,
Bones of the human skeleton, with salient
how can we attempt to reconstruct physical characteristics—sex, age at death,
differences between the sexes. build, appearance, and relationships? A good example of what we can learn
Skull larger cranial

Brow ridge more prominent bones
facial bones
Jaw larger mandible
clavicle
scapula
Rib cage and
sternum sternum shorter
rib
humerus
vertebra
Pelvis narrower and innominate Pelvis wider and

arch higher bone cavity larger (for
bearing children)
sacrum
radius
ulna
carpals
metacarpals
phalanges
femur
patella
tibia
fibula
tarsals
metatarsals
phalanges
MALE FEMALE
234 8 • What Were They Like?

The variety of human remains.
(Above left) The well-preserved

2000-year-old body of a girl, drowned
in a bog at Windeby, northern Germany.
(Left) Early medieval burials at Sutton

Hoo, eastern England, could be recovered (Above right) The 8500-year-old skeleton
only as outlines in the acid sandy soil. of a child from Çatalhöyük in Turkey.
from human remains is provided by the Grauballe Man bog body (see box
overleaf). The techniques for assessing each different physical characteristic
are described below.
Which Sex?
Where intact bodies and artistic depictions are concerned, sexing is usually
straightforward from the genitalia. If these are not present, secondary
characteristics, such as breasts and facial hair, provide fairly reliable indicators.
Where human skeletons and bone remains without soft tissue are concerned,
however, there are lots more sources of evidence, owing to differences between
the sexes in the size and shape of various bones, known as sexual dimorphism.
The best indicator of sex is the shape of the pelvis, since this is visibly
different in males and females (see diagram opposite). Other parts of the
skeleton can also be used in sex differentiation: male bones are generally
bigger, longer, more robust, and have more developed muscle markings than
those of females, which are slighter.
Identifying Physical Attributes 235

Grauballe Man:
The Body in the Bog
Grauballe
•
In 1952, peat cutters at Grauballe, Physique

Denmark, encountered a beautifully Grauballe Man appears to have been of
preserved bog body. It was lying in average build for the period. His height
a prone position, with the left leg has been estimated at between 1.65
extended and the right leg and arm and 1.7 m (5 ft. 6 in. and 5 ft. 8 in.), but
flexed. The various studies made of the this is uncertain due to shrinkage of
body by multidisciplinary teams both the remains. (Above) Grauballe Man’s beautifully
preserved feet, shortly after excavation.
in 1952 and, with new techniques, a
few years ago have yielded remarkable Appearance
insights into the life and death of this There were no traces of clothing or have incipient arthritis in the thoracic
individual, now radiocarbon dated to artifacts with the body. His hair is 15 cm vertebrae, which rarely occurs before
400–200 bce, most likely c. 290 bce. (6 in.) long. Its relatively straight-cut ends the age of thirty. He still had twenty-one
suggest it was cut by scissors. It is now teeth, though several had fallen out
Age and Sex reddish-brown, but this may be due to since his death. They were worn, due
The body is that of a man, aged its immersion in the bog, so one cannot to a coarse diet, and dental analysis
about thirty. When found, he had be sure what color it was originally. The revealed periods of starvation or poor
a 1-cm- (0.4-in.-) long beard and hands have well-preserved fingerprints, health during his early childhood. The
moustache, but these fell off during and the rounded-off nails, like the existence of periodontitis and cavities
conservation. As facial hair grows clear lines on the palms, indicate that here and there showed that he had
c. 2.5–3.5 mm (0.1–0.14 in.) per week, he had not been involved in heavy endured terrible toothache at times.
and post-mortem skin shrinkage causes manual work—the same seems to be Analysis of his hair shows that in his
beard hair to stick out by 4–5 mm (0.16– true of many other male bog bodies in final months he had a terrestrial-based
0.2 in.), his beard was thus about two northwestern Europe. diet, with most protein coming from
weeks old when he died. animal sources. His last meal was a
State of Health gruel, a kind of poor muesli—it was
Grauballe Man was apparently fit dominated (80 percent) by seeds from
and healthy—his body displays no a very small number of weed species,
sign of illness or disease—but he did but there was also cereal bran. Small
fragments of bone, including some from
a pig, showed the presence of meat.
(Left) The body of Grauballe Man during The food would have been nutritious
excavation in 1952. but not palatable—it is not known if
(Near left)
This deep
throat wound,
severing the
jugular vein
and carotid
arteries, was
the cause
of Grauballe
Man’s death.

(Left) Grauballe Man’s body,
as displayed in the Moesgaard
Museum, Denmark.
it was typical of the everyday diet or and carotid arteries were severed by his knees so that his throat could be cut
not. The absence of fruit and greens a large sharp blade. It was originally more easily. We do not know why he,
suggests that he died in the winter. thought that a blow to the head in or any other bog body, died—perhaps
the temple area had been inflicted as a sacrifice, or as an executed
How Did He Die? by a blunt instrument, but a recent CT criminal—but we have been able to
The cause of his death was a deep cut scan has proved it to be post-mortem learn a great deal about the life and
to the throat from ear to ear while his damage. An oblique fracture on the left death of Grauballe Man thanks to the
head was bent sharply backwards— tibia, however, was clearly caused by a very wide variety of tests and analyses
it was so deep that the jugular vein heavy blow—perhaps to bring him to that have been applied to him.
For children it is worth noting that, with the exception of preserved bodies
and artistic depictions showing genitalia, their remains cannot be sexed with
the same degree of reliability as adults, although analysis of teeth can provide
some evidence. When we examine subadult skeletal remains we can often only
guess—though the odds of being right are 50:50. Recently, a new technique
has been developed for determining the sex of fragmentary or infant skeletal
remains from DNA analysis.
How Long Did They Live?

Some scholars feel able to assign exact age at death to particular deceased
human beings, but it should be stressed that what we can usually establish
with any certainty is biological age at death—young, adult, old—rather than
any accurate measurement in years and months. The best indicators of age,
as with animals, are the teeth. We can study the eruption and replacement
of the milk teeth; the sequence of eruption of the permanent dentition; and
finally the degree of wear, allowing as best one can for the effects of diet
and method of food preparation.
A timescale for age at death derived from this kind of dental information
in modern people works reasonably well for recent periods, despite

much individual variation. But can it be applied to the dentition of our
remote ancestors? New work on the microstructure of teeth suggests that
18–30
old assumptions may not be correct. Tooth enamel grows at a regular,
16–25 measurable rate, and its microscopic growth lines form ridges that can be
counted from epoxy resin replicas of the tooth placed in a scanning electron
microscope. In modern populations a new ridge grows approximately each
13–19 week, and analysis of molar structure in Neanderthals has shown that they
had a very similar rate of growth to that of modern humans. By measuring
15–20 tooth growth ridges in fossil specimens, Tim Bromage and Christopher Dean
have concluded that previous investigators overestimated the age at death
15–23
of many early hominins. The famous 1–2 million-year-old australopithecine
skull from Taung, South Africa, for example, belonged to a child who
probably died at just over three years of age, not at five or six as had been
16–23 believed. This suggests that our earliest ancestors grew up more quickly than
we do, and that their development into maturity was more like that of the
modern great apes.
Bones are also used in assessing age. The sequence in which the
16–20 articulating ends of bones become fused to the shafts gives a timescale that
16–20 can be applied to the remains of young people. One of the last bones to fuse
is the inner end of the clavicle (collar bone) at about twenty-six; after that
age, different criteria are needed to age bones. Skull thickness in immature
individuals also bears a rough relationship to age—the thicker the skull the
Assessing age: the years at which bone
ends fuse. older the person—and in old age all bones usually get thinner and lighter,
although skull bones actually get thicker in about 10 percent of elderly people.
But what if the bone remains are small fragments? The answer lies under
the microscope, in bone microstructure. As we get older, the architecture
of our bones changes in a distinct and measurable way. A young longbone,
at about twenty, has rings around its circumference, and a relatively small
number of circular structures called osteons. With age the rings disappear,
and more and smaller osteons appear. By this method, even a fragment can
provide an age. Putting a thin section of a femur (thigh bone) under the
microscope and studying the stage of development is a technique that, in tests
with documented known skeletons, has achieved accuracy to within five years.
Assessing age: changes in bone structure

are visible under the microscope as humans
grow older. The circular osteons become
more numerous and extend to the edge
of the bone.

InterpretIng Age At DeAth. It must be stressed that we can only calculate
average age at death for the bodies and skeletons that have survived and
been discovered. Many scholars used erroneously to believe that to dig up
a cemetery, and assess the age and sex of its occupants, provided an accurate
guide to the life expectancy and mortality pattern of a particular culture. This
entails the considerable assumption that the cemetery contains all members
of the community who died during the period of its use—that everyone was
buried there regardless of age, sex, or status; that nobody died elsewhere; and
that the cemetery was not reused at another time. This assumption cannot
realistically be made. A cemetery provides a sample of the living population,
but we do not know how representative that sample might be. Figures on life
expectancy and average age should therefore be looked at critically before they
are accepted and used by archaeologists.
What Did They Look Like?

Once again, it is preserved bodies that provide us with our clearest glimpses
of faces. Tollund Man, one of the remarkable Iron Age bog bodies from
Denmark, is the best-known prehistoric example. Discoveries at Thebes in
Egypt in 1881 and 1898 of two royal burial caches have given us a veritable
gallery of mummified pharaohs, their faces still vivid, even if some shrinkage
and distortion has taken place.
Thanks to artists from the Upper Paleolithic onward, we also have a huge
array of portraits. Some of them, such as images painted on mummy cases,
are directly associated with the remains of their subject. Others, such as
Greek and Roman busts, are accurate likenesses of well-known figures whose
remains may be lost for ever. The extraordinary life-size terracotta army found
near Xi’an, China, is made up of thousands of different models of soldiers
of the third century bce. Even though only the general features of each are
represented, they constitute an unprecedented “library” of individuals, as well
as providing invaluable information on hairstyles, armor, and weaponry. From
later periods we have many life- or death-masks, sometimes used as the basis
for life-size funerary effigies or tomb figures, such as those of European royalty
and other notables from medieval times onward.
Attempts to reconstruct faces were carried out in the nineteenth century
by German anatomists in order to produce likenesses from the skulls of such
celebrities as Schiller, Kant, and Bach. But the best-known exponent of the
technique in the twentieth century was the Russian Mikhail Gerasimov, who
worked on remains ranging from fossil humans to Ivan the Terrible. It is now
felt that much of his work represented “inspired interpretation,” rather than
factual reconstruction. The process is now more accurate.
One of the most intriguing facial reconstructions has been of the best-
preserved Etruscan skeleton known today, that of a noblewoman called

Seianti Hanunia Tlesnasa, who died about 2200 years ago in central Italy.
Since 1887 her remains have been housed in the British Museum inside
a splendid painted terracotta sarcophagus that bears her engraved name
(illustrated opposite). The lid of this sarcophagus features a life-size image
of the dead woman, reclining on a soft pillow, with a bronze mirror in her
jeweled hand. This is perhaps the earliest identifiable portrait in western
art, but is it really Seianti?
Anthropologists deduced from the skeleton that the woman was about
1.5 m (4 ft. 11 in.) tall, and middle-aged at death. Damage and wear on her
bones, and the fact that she was almost toothless, had at first suggested old
age, but in fact she had incurred severe injuries, most likely a riding accident
that had crushed her right hip and knocked out the teeth of her right lower
jaw. The bone was damaged where the jaw joins the skull, and opening
her mouth wide would have been painful. This prevented her from eating
anything but soups and gruels, and from keeping her remaining teeth clean—
most of them subsequently fell out. Seianti would also have had painful
arthritis and increasing disabilities.
Faces from the past.

(Right) Tutankhamun’s mummy
(Left) Bronze head of the was unwrapped in 1923, revealing
Roman emperor Hadrian a shrunken body. The young king’s
(reigned 117–138 ce), from the original height was estimated by
Thames River. measuring the longbones.
(Below left) An old man with (Below center) Tutankhamun’s

a wrinkled face is portrayed facial features have recently been
(with an accompanying reconstructed using CT scans of
duck) on this 1000-year-old his skull as a base—three teams
Tiwanaku-period (500–1100 separately produced very similar
ce) vase from the island of reconstructions, one of which is
Pariti in Lake Titicaca, Bolivia. shown here.

(Right) The terracotta sarcophagus of
Seianti Hanunia Tlesnasa, which contained
her bones; the lid takes the form of a life-
size image of the dead woman—but how
accurately did it represent her appearance?
(Above) The reconstruction made from the

skull found in the sarcophagus.
Two of the surviving teeth confirmed, from analysis of the dentine,

that she was about fifty when she died. And radiocarbon dating of the
bones produced a result of 250–150 bce, which proved that the skeleton was
genuinely ancient and of the right period. The facial reconstruction showed
a middle-aged woman who had grown rather obese. How did it compare
with the coffin image?
From the side, there were differences, since the artist had given Seianti
a prettier nose, but from the front the resemblances were clearer. The
final confirmation came from a computerized technique for matching
facial proportions and features—the computer photocomparison of the
reconstruction and the portrait left no doubt that this was the same person.
The sarcophagus image showed her as some years younger, with fewer chins,
and a smaller, more girlish mouth. In other words, the sculptor had made
flattering improvements to the portrait of this short, portly, middle-aged
woman, but also captured Seianti’s likeness extremely well.
How Were They Related?

In certain cases it is possible to assess the relationship between two
individuals by comparing skull shape or analyzing the hair. There are
other methods of achieving the same result, primarily by study of dental
morphology. Some dental anomalies (such as enlarged or extra teeth, and
especially missing wisdom teeth) run in families. Blood groups, which are
inherited in a simple fashion from parents, can also sometimes help clarify
physical relationships between different bodies.

Cell
Nucleus DNA
Bases
Gene
Chromosome
Mitochondrion
Genes, the organizers of inheritance, are Family relationships can also be worked out through DNA analysis (see
composed of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid),
which carries the hereditary instructions
illustration above). In 1985 the Swedish scientist Svante Pääbo first succeeded
needed to build a body and make it work. in extracting and cloning mitochondrial DNA from the 2400-year-old mummy
Genes are copied or “replicated” with every
new generation of living cells; nuclear DNA
of an Egyptian boy. Over such a long time period, the DNA molecules are
forms the blueprint for the cells, and is broken up by chemical action, so there is no question of reconstituting
copied every time a new cell is produced.
The mitochondria (small organelles) within
a functioning gene, far less a living body. But information on the DNA
the cell contain relatively small loops of DNA sequences of, for example, Egyptian mummies may determine whether
(mitochondrial DNA; abbreviated mtDNA)
that have been intensively studied.
members of a dynasty did indeed practice incest, as is commonly believed:
an analysis of DNA from six mummies of 2200 bce found at Hagasa, Egypt, has
proved that they were a family group. Recent advances in genetic engineering
have opened up fascinating possibilities for future work in human evolution,
past human relationships, and the origin and evolution of disease.
Where Did They Come from?

People moved from one region to another in the past, as we do today. The best
information on early population movements is the genetic material we all
carry ourselves. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is contained not in the
cell nucleus but in other bodies in our cells (mitochondria), and is passed on
only by females, has proved very important in tracing populations in the past.
Since mtDNA is inherited only through the mother, unlike nuclear DNA, which
is a mixture of both parents’ genes, it preserves a family record that is altered
over the generations only by mutations.
In 1987 Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan Wilson wrote an
influential paper that analyzed mtDNA from 147 present-day women from

Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, and New Guinea and concluded that people of
sub-Saharan African descent showed the most differences among themselves,
which implied that their mtDNA had had the most time to mutate, and hence
that their ancestors must be the earliest. This would imply that our species,
Homo sapiens, originated in sub-Saharan Africa. This important result, which
is now widely accepted, argued against the alternative view, the multiregional
hypothesis, in which there would have been an evolutionary process in
different parts of the world involving the transition from our ancestor Homo
erectus to Homo sapiens. It seems instead that the lineages derived from
Homo erectus and living outside of Africa became extinct, being replaced by
the new sapiens humans some 60,000 years ago. This view has been supported
by the study of Y-chromosome DNA, which is inherited in the male line
(and which likewise does not recombine as the genetic material is passed
on to the next generation).
The archaeology of our own cells has started to tell us much about
ourselves and our past. It must be noted, however, that genetics based
upon living populations can only tell us about past populations that left
descendants; it can tell us nothing about people who died out. For that we
have to turn to ancient DNA.
AncIent DnA. The recent contribution of ancient DNA, from the remains
of ancient burials and other human remains, has proven highly important.
The Neanderthal genome project led by Svante Pääbo published the entire
draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome, using Neanderthal bones from
the Vindija Cave in Croatia, between 44,000 and 38,000 years old. This is the
most ambitious project so far based on ancient DNA, and indicates that the
date of divergence between modern humans and Neanderthals is estimated
to lie between 440,000 and 270,000 years ago. They also observed that the
Neanderthals are significantly closer to living Europeans and Asians than
to modern Africans. It was concluded that there must have been significant
gene flow from Neanderthals into modern humans, which may be, “explained
by mixing of early modern humans ancestral to present-day non-Africans
with Neanderthals in the Middle East before their expansion into Eurasia.”
This conclusion has proved a controversial one. The work of the Neanderthal
genome project represents nonetheless a significant step forward in our
understanding of the human past.
The picture has been complicated by the DNA analysis of another fossil
fragment from the Denisova Cave in Siberia, revealing that the individual in
question there is neither human nor Neanderthal, but a hominin of a species
that split from the human and Neanderthal lineage some 1 million years
ago. The whole-genome sequencing of the tooth and finger bone in question
suggests that the Denisovans have an evolutionary history distinct both from

western Eurasian Neanderthals and from modern humans, although the claim
Key Concepts for a new species would traditionally be supported by some more impressive
Assessing Human parts of the cranium and skeleton.
Physical Attributes
Ancient DnA of “MoDern” HuMAns. New developments are allowing
Sex: intact bodies can be sexed
genetic work on anatomically modern humans of our own species to be
from the genitalia; skeletons and
bone remains, much more common
undertaken on human remains from the Upper Paleolithic period, and indeed
in the archaeological record, are also on prehistoric human remains from more recent times.
sexed from size and form differences Cold conditions are favorable to the preservation of ancient DNA, and so
between male and female bones. most of the positive results so far come from samples found in northern
Children are difficult to sex
Europe, Siberia, or North America. The pace of research in the ancient DNA
Age: the main methods of
field is illustrated by the 2014 whole-genome analysis by Morten Rasmussen
establishing the age of a skeleton and his colleagues in Copenhagen of a male infant from the Anzick burial
are by examinations of the growth site in western Montana, radiocarbon dated to about 12,500 years ago. Found
patterns of bones and teeth, and of associated with tools of the Clovis industry, it is the only human burial
bone microstructure
directly linked with the Clovis culture. His mtDNA is of a lineage already
Appearance: it is now possible
thought to be one of the founder lineages carried by the First Americans, and
to make accurate facial his Y-chromosome lineage is also common to Native Americans. Comparison
reconstructions of ancient of his nuclear genome with that of Eurasians and Native Americans shows
individuals, as long as their skull that he is more genetically similar to Siberians than to other Eurasians.
or fragments of it survive
In Europe, ancient DNA has shown that the position is more complicated
Relationships: examinations of skull
than one might appreciate if relying simply on DNA from living populations.
shape, hair type, teeth, blood group, An early European farmer cluster, with origins in Anatolia or the Near East, can
and DNA can help to establish now be recognized in samples taken from early Neolithic burials in Germany
whether two individuals were related and Sweden. A west European hunter-gatherer cluster can be recognized from
samples from hunter-gatherer (Mesolithic) contexts in Spain and Luxembourg,
DNA: the rapidly developing field of
genetics offers many possibilities for
as can an ancient north Eurasian cluster from sites in Siberia, including Mal’ta.
archaeologists studying evolution Technical difficulties are being overcome in this rapidly developing field,
and the past movements of humans. allowing documentation of a migration of people from the Eurasian steppe
Much information is stored in our into central Europe around 2500 bce, implicated in the formation of the Corded
own DNA, but new developments
Ware culture and in the subsequent occupation of southern Britain by a beaker-
are increasingly making the study
of ancient DNA feasible
using culture in the following centuries.
Disease, Deformity, and Death

In addition to the basic physical attributes described above, it is also necessary
to look at the other, often more negative aspects of the picture: What was
people’s quality of life? What was their state of health? We may know how
long they lived, but how did they die? Where we have intact bodies, the precise
cause of death can sometimes be deduced—indeed, in some cases, such as
the asphyxiated people of Pompeii and Herculaneum, it is obvious from the
circumstances (the effect of the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius). For the more
numerous skeletal remains that come down to us, however, cause of death can

be ascertained only rarely, since most afflictions leading to death leave no trace
on bone. Paleopathology (the study of ancient disease) tells us far more about
life than about death, a fact of great benefit to the archaeologist.
In parallel, biological and forensic anthropologists are increasingly using
The coffin of Meresamun, an ancient
Egyptian singer-priestess of c. 800 bce,
techniques developed within archaeology to assist them with the recovery and
in the temple at Karnak, was acquired by study of human remains. Indeed, a new subdiscipline has now developed—
the Oriental Institute in Chicago in 1920
and has remained unopened. It has been
forensic archaeology—which helps in the recovery and interpretation of
CT-scanned three times as technology murder victims, as well as trying to identify individuals within mass burials,
has improved—most recently in 2008
when a state-of-the-art 256-slice scanner
as encountered in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
was used. The data can be rendered in
3D and manipulated in different ways,
effectively allowing one to strip away
Evidence in Soft Tissue
successive layers, and to isolate particular Since most infectious diseases rarely leave detectable traces in bones, a proper
bones or features of interest for analysis;
movie sequences can also be created.
analysis of ancient diseases can only be carried out on surviving soft tissue,
Many details missed in the previous scans which rarely survives except in specific environments. The surface tissue
were uncovered, from items of jewelry
and dental features to degenerate spinal
sometimes reveals evidence of illness, such as eczema. It can also reveal
changes and minor post-mortem fractures. some causes of violent death, such as the slit throats of several bog bodies.
Disease, Deformity, and Death 245

Richard III UNITED
KINGDOM
Rediscovered Leicester•
In 2012 the world was startled to learn The project was an unusual
that a skeleton, believed to belong to collaboration between professional and
England’s King Richard III (1452–85), academic archaeologists, an amateur
had been uncovered in Leicester, in the group (the Richard III Society), and the
Midlands. Immortalized by Shakespeare City of Leicester. Excavation began in
as a villainous hunchback, the last August 2012, in what had become a
of the Plantagenet kings was killed parking lot, and rapidly revealed the
in battle at Bosworth Field in 1485, foundations of part of the church. The
and it is known that he was buried in skeleton in question was found on day
Leicester’s Greyfriars church. There one, in a location that turned out to
was also a story, however, that his body be a high-status position beneath the The proposed skeleton of Richard III,
was later exhumed and thrown into the choir. The body was in an irregularly cut showing pronounced curvature of the spine.
nearby river; in any case the church was grave that was too short for it, whereas
demolished in the sixteenth century. other graves in the choir were neatly on his heart and lungs, possibly
rectangular and of the correct length. causing shortness of breath and pain.
Excavations in the Leicester parking lot where The lower limbs were fully extended, but Without scoliosis, his thigh bones
Richard III’s burial was found. The grave cut torso was twisted to the north, and the indicate that he would have stood
can be made out at the bottom center of the
photo. Richard’s remains were reinterred inside
head was propped up against a corner c. 1.73 m (5 ft. 8 in.) tall, above average
Leicester Cathedral in a formal ceremony in of the hole: in other words, it seemed for the period, but the disability would
March 2015. the body had been crammed feetfirst have reduced this to perhaps 1.42 m
into this small hole, which implies great (4 ft. 8 in.), and his right shoulder would
haste and/or a lack of respect. There have stood higher than the left. In other
was no evidence of a coffin or shroud. words, this man had a squat torso and
If the skeleton is indeed Richard, uneven shoulders, which fits the few
the haste may have been caused by the contemporary accounts of Richard’s
fact that his body had been on public appearance. Radiocarbon dating of the
display for several days, in the height of remains produced a result of 1456–
summer. The hands were crossed at the 1530 ce, which is consistent with the
wrist, which may indicate that they were battle of 1485.
bound. The feet had been lost to some The teeth were a little worn, but
digging by nineteenth-century workmen, had no cavities, and he was infected
but otherwise the skeleton is in good with roundworms. Analysis of nitrogen
condition—with 135 bones and 29 teeth. and carbon in the ribs by different
It is that of an adult male of gracile build, laboratories revealed a high protein
aged, according to bone growth and diet, including about 25 percent
tooth development, in his late twenties seafood, which implies high status.
to late thirties (Richard was 32 when he Oxygen and strontium isotopes from
died). The most remarkable feature is a fluids he ingested as a child reflect
severe scoliosis, i.e. a spine badly curved the geology of the water source, and
to the side (as opposed to the hunched are consistent with Richard’s origins
back of legend). in Northamptonshire. It then seems
The scoliosis developed around the the person moved farther west by the
age of ten to thirteen. The progressive age of seven, possibly to the Welsh
condition would have put a strain Marches (Richard resided at Ludlow

The facial reconstruction of the Leicester
skeleton bears a remarkable likeness to the few
portraits of Richard III, but the sculptor did know
in advance which skull was involved.
Castle in 1459). On the other hand,

there is a significant increase in the
oxygen isotope composition in the last
few years of his life, which analysts
claim cannot be accounted for by beer
and food, so they have attributed it to
grape juice, in the form of wine—the
equivalent of a modern bottle a day None of the skull wounds could have (15 miles) west of Leicester. Finally, initial
would lead to such a raised signature! been inflicted on someone wearing genetic analysis has been carried out on
The skeleton displays at least eleven a fifteenth-century helmet. Two other the body’s mitochondrial DNA, and a link
wounds, all of them peri-mortem (i.e. wounds—a cut on a right rib, and one has been claimed with two modern-day
inflicted round the time of death), since on the right pelvis (probably caused by descendants of Anne of York, Richard’s
none shows signs of healing. Two large a thrust through the right buttock)— sister. The researchers therefore believe
wounds under the back of the skull are are also unlikely on someone wearing that they have proven the identity of this
consistent with blows from a halberd armour. So these may be “humiliation skeleton “beyond reasonable doubt.”
and sword, and would probably have injuries”, delivered after death. In short, Whether or not they are correct, the
caused almost instant death. There is a this person almost certainly died in project has displayed archaeology’s
third, smaller penetrating wound to the battle, and the nearest battle in this occasional and unique potential for
top of the skull, possibly from a dagger. time range was that of Bosworth, 24 km mass appeal to the world’s media.
Where inner tissue is involved, a number of methods are at the analyst’s

disposal. X-rays can provide much information, and have been used on
Egyptian mummies, but newer, more powerful methods, such as Computed
Tomography (CT) scanning and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), are also
now available (see illustration, p. 245).
Skeletal Evidence for Deformity and Disease

Skeletal material is far more abundant than preserved soft tissue, and can
reveal a great deal of paleopathological information. Effects on the outer
surface of bone can be divided into those caused by violence or accident, and
those caused by disease or congenital deformity. Where violence or accidents
resulting in skeletal trauma are concerned, observations can often reveal how
the damage was caused, and how serious its consequences were. The small
number of diseases that affect bone do so via either erosion, growths, or
an altered structure. Furthermore, the bony lesions associated with various
illnesses can differ in terms of their number and location. Some afflictions
leave quite clear signs (see box opposite and above), whereas others do not.
The former include several infections, nutritional deficiencies, and cancers. It is
also possible to detect growth disorders by the overall size and shape of bones.
Disease, Deformity, and Death 247

Diet and Nutrition
Nutrition can be described as the measure of a diet’s ability to maintain the
human body in its physical and social environment. We are of course interested
to be able to learn whether a particular group of people in the past enjoyed
good nutrition. Furthermore, comparison of nutrition at different periods may
significantly add to our understanding of fundamental changes to the pattern
of life, as in the transition from hunting and gathering to farming.
Malnutrition
What are the skeletal signs of malnutrition? So-called Harris lines, detected by
X-rays on bones, indicate periods of arrested growth during development, and
these are sometimes caused by malnutrition. A similar phenomenon occurs
in teeth, where patches of poorly mineralized enamel, which a specialist can
detect in a tooth section, reflect growth disturbance brought about by a diet
deficient in milk, fish, oil, or animal fats (or sometimes by such childhood
diseases as measles). A lack of vitamin C produces scurvy, an affliction that
causes changes in the palate and gums, and has been identified in an Anglo-
Saxon individual from Norfolk, England, as well as in Peru, North America,
and elsewhere.
The general size and condition of a skeleton’s bones can provide an
indication of aspects of diet. Sand in food, or the grit from grindstones,
can have drastic effects on teeth. The excessive abrasion of teeth among
certain California Native Americans can be linked to their habit of leaching
the tannins out of acorns (their staple food) through a bed of sand, leaving
a residue in the food.
Additional evidence for malnutrition can be obtained from art and
literature. Vitamin B deficiency (beriberi) is mentioned in the Su Wen, a Chinese
text of the third millennium bce, and Strabo also refers to a case among
Roman troops. Egyptian art provides such scenes as the well-known famine
depicted at Saqqara, dating to around 2350 bce.
Evidence for malnutrition: detail of a wall

relief from the complex surrounding the
pyramid of Unas, at Saqqara in Egypt,
depicting famine victims, c. 2350 bce.

Chemical analysis of bone allows further insights. Much has been done
with the stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen (see Chapter 6), which
vary among individuals according to what they ate. The carbon isotopes
incorporated in bone—the stable ones, not the 14C that is used for dating
purposes—can be used to detect a diet high in certain plants or in marine
resources. The consumption of maize, in particular, can be identified, so
the method has been used to investigate subsistence strategies in parts of
the prehistoric New World. In eastern North America, for example, a shift in
the stable carbon isotope signature of human bones about 1000 years ago
corresponds nicely to a marked change in the representation of maize in the
plant remains from habitation sites. This is one example where independent
lines of evidence—the composition of bones and the kinds of carbonized plant
remains—complement one another, increasing confidence in the inferences
one makes about the past.
Cannibalism
Cannibalism—the eating of human flesh by humans—has often been claimed
to exist in different periods of the past, usually on the flimsiest of evidence.
Early scholars simply assumed that cannibalism was a “primitive” trait and
must therefore have existed in prehistory, but the traditional urge to uncover
cannibalism suffered a massive jolt with the appearance more than thirty
years ago of a ground-breaking work by anthropologist William Arens that,
for the first time, showed that the vast majority of claims for cannibalism
in the ethnographic or ethnohistorical record were untrustworthy. In recent
decades, a better understanding of taphonomy, greater familiarity with
the huge variety of funerary rituals around the world, and a more objective
assessment of the facts, have helped to weed out many claims for prehistoric
cannibalism. Meanwhile new claims have been put forward that rely on more
plausible evidence.
At Atapuerca in northern Spain (see box, p. 131), the bones of a human
ancestor called Homo antecessor, dating to perhaps 1 million years ago and
found in the Gran Dolina site, bear abundant cutmarks that, in the absence of
any evidence for funerary rituals or other secondary treatment of the dead, are
most likely butchery marks, which have therefore been interpreted as evidence
for cannibalism, and it is difficult to disagree with this inference. However,
a later site at Atapuerca, the Sima de los Huesos, also presents the earliest
evidence in the world for some kind of funerary ritual, perhaps some 600,000
years ago. We know from recent times that a huge variety of often bizarre
funerary practices exists, some involving cutting, smashing, and burning
of bones, either shortly after death or long afterwards. The archaeological
record contains many instances from different periods, stretching back into
prehistory, that can plausibly be attributed to such practices.
Diet and Nutrition 249

Cutmarks on this human bone from
Gran Dolina were almost certainly caused
by butchering.
In order to decide whether human remains were produced by cannibalism

or by funerary activities (or warfare, etc.), there are two main categories of
evidence: the presence of human bones with marks of cutting, smashing,
or burning, and the presence of human bones mixed with animal bones
(i.e. the remains of food), with similar marks and treatment. However, one
must avoid jumping to simplistic and “obvious” conclusions. The data are
always ambiguous, and must be assessed carefully and objectively.
Dramatic claims have been made for cannibalism among the Ancestral
Pueblo of the American Southwest, around 1100 ce, including supposed
human fecal material containing human tissue; but once again alternative
explanations are available, involving not only funerary practices but also the
extreme violence and mutilation inflicted on enemy corpses in warfare.
The fecal material may actually be from a scavenging coyote.
The possibility remains that cannibalism may have existed occasionally,
but even if that were true, the contribution of human flesh to diet must have
been minimal and sporadic, paling into insignificance beside that of other
creatures, especially the big herbivores.
Study Questions
1 Which physical attributes can be determined from human remains?

2 How can archaeologists determine if two individuals are related?
3 How are teeth used to assess how old an individual was at death?
4 What are some of the methods archaeologists use to determine
what people in the past looked like?
5 What can human remains tell us about the lives of people living
in the past?
6 What is the evidence for prehistoric cannibalism? How valid is it?

Summary
the physIcAl reMAIns of past peoples provide direct evidence about their lives.
Bioarchaeology is the study of human remains from archaeological sites. Though
whole human bodies can be preserved in a variety of ways, including mummification
and freezing, the vast majority of human remains recovered by archaeologists are
in the form of skeletons and bone fragments.
An IMportAnt pArt of the analysis of human remains is the identification of

physical attributes. The gender of skeletal remains, for example, can be determined
through observing the shape of the pelvis as well as other bones. Teeth and bones
can help establish an individual’s relative age at death, namely whether they were
young, adult, or old. It is even possible to reconstruct what an individual looked like
through careful analysis of skull features, or to assess the relationship between
two individuals.
exAMInAtIon of huMAn reMAIns can also shed light on the more negative
aspects of past lives—the diseases and deformites suffered, and sometimes
an individual’s cause of death. Study of bones and the chemical signatures within
them provides evidence of ancient diet and nutrition (or malnutrition), and can
even give clues as to whether early humans might have eaten each other.
Further Reading
The following works provide an Donnan, C. B. 2003. Moche Portrait
introduction to the study of the physical Vessels from Ancient Peru. University
remains of humans: of Texas Press: Austin.
Larsen, C. S. 2002. Skeletons in Our
Aufderheide, A. C. 2003. The Scientific Closet: Revealing Our Past Through
Study of Mummies. Cambridge Bioarchaeology. Princeton University
University Press: Cambridge Press: Princeton.
& New York. Matisoo-Smith, E. & Horsburgh, K. A.
Blau, S. & Ubelaker, D. H. 2008. 2012. DNA for Archaeologists. Left
Handbook of Forensic Archaeology Coast Press: Walnut Creek, CA.
and Anthropology. World Mays, S. 2010. The Archaeology of
Archaeological Congress Research Human Bones. Routledge: London.
Handbooks in Archaeology. Left Reich, D. 2018. Who We Are and How
Coast Press: Walnut Creek, CA. We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the
Brothwell, D. 1986. The Bog Man and New Science of the Human Past.
the Archaeology of People. Harvard Pantheon Books: New York.
University Press: Cambridge, MA. Waldron, T. 2001. Shadows in the Soil:
Chamberlain, A. T. & Parker Pearson, M. Human Bones and Archaeology.
2004. Earthly Remains. The History Tempus: Stroud.
and Science of Preserved Human
Bodies. Oxford University Press: [See p. 345 for a list of useful websites]
New York.

9 What Did They Think?
Cognitive Archaeology
Cognitive Archaeology 253

Investigating How Human
Symbolizing Faculties Evolved 254
❑ Paleolithic Art 258
Working with Symbols 260

Establishing Place: The Location
of Memory 261
Measuring the World 262
Planning: Maps for the Future 263
Symbols of Organization and
Power 265
The Archaeology of Religion 267
❑ The World’s Oldest Sanctuary:
Göbekli Tepe 270
The Impact of Literacy 272

Literacy in Classical Greece 273
Study Questions 274

Summary 275
Further Reading 275
The mental attributes of our ancestors are covered in this chapter.
In Chapter 8 we examined their physical attributes, but of course the lives
of ancient people who produced the archaeological record were not just about
the physical aspects of existence: they had mental abilities, thoughts, and
spiritual lives, just as we do today.
We will begin this chapter by looking at cognitive archaeology—the study
of past ways of thought from material remains—which is in many respects
one of the newer branches of modern archaeology. Rather than simply
“imagining” what people in the past must have thought or believed, it is
possible to use the more disciplined techniques of cognitive archaeology
to gain insights into these important aspects of the past: we can analyze
the concepts people had and the way they thought.
We can, for example, investigate how people went about describing
and measuring their world: as we shall see, the system of weights used
in the Indus Valley civilization can be understood very well today. We can
investigate which material goods people valued most highly, and perhaps
viewed as symbols of authority or power. And we can also investigate
the manner in which people conceived of the supernatural, and how they
responded to these conceptions in their ritual practice.
It is generally agreed today that what most clearly distinguishes the
human species from other life forms is our ability to use symbols.
A symbol may be defined as the representation of an idea or of a concept,
whether in verbal or in visual form. All intelligent thought and indeed all
coherent speech are based on symbols, for words are themselves symbols,
where the sound or the written letters stand for and thus represent (or
symbolize) an aspect of the real world. Usually, however, meaning is
attributed to a particular symbol in an arbitrary way. And that meaning
is specific to a particular cultural tradition. It is usually impossible to infer

the meaning of a symbol within a given culture from the symbolic form
of the image or object alone. We have to see how that form is used, and
to try to understand its meaning from the context in which it is used.
Cognitive archaeology has thus to be very careful about specific contexts
of discovery. There are very few symbols that have a universal meaning
cross-culturally. It is the assemblage that matters, not the individual
object in isolation.
Investigating How Human Symbolizing Faculties Evolved

The field of cognitive archaeology is concerned primarily with the cognitive
behavior of our own species, Homo sapiens. Modern genetic studies suggest
that we are all closely related, and that the innate cognitive abilities
within any one regional group of our species, along with other behavioral
attributes, are much like those in another. For instance, all human groups
today have the capacity of complex speech, a capacity that in all probability
we share with our ancestors of 80,000 to 60,000 years ago, the time of the
first human dispersals out of Africa. Clearly, however, as we go back much
further in time and consider earlier hominin species, whether Homo habilis
or Homo erectus, we are dealing with creatures of more limited cognitive
abilities. Their study represents an important subdivision of cognitive
archaeology—the development of hominin cognitive abilities up to the
emergence of our own species. It presents special problems, since for these
earlier ancestors we cannot make the assumption that they had innate
cognitive facilities much like our own. That is something that has to
be investigated.
Key Concepts Language and SeLf-ConSCiouSneSS. Most biological anthropologists

Early Human Symbolizing agree that modern human abilities have been present since the emergence
Faculties of Homo sapiens some 200,000–150,000 years ago. But as we look earlier,
scholars are less united. Some archaeologists and biological anthropologists
The development of language and
consider that an effective language may have been developed by Homo habilis
self-consciousness
around 2 million years ago, along with the first chopper tools, but others
Evidence of design in tool think that a full language capability developed very much more recently,
manufacture with the emergence of Homo sapiens. This would imply that the tools made
by hominins in the Lower and Middle Paleolithic periods were produced
Evidence of the procurement
by beings without true linguistic capacities.
of materials and planning
The origins of self-consciousness have been debated by scientists and
The deliberate burial of human philosophers, but with few definite conclusions. There is little evidence
remains available to clarify the matter, but one philosopher, John Searle, has argued
that there is no sudden transition, but rather a gradual development:
Representations and “art”
he asserted, for example, that his dog Ludwig had a significant degree
of self-consciousness.
254 9 • What Did They Think?

There are several lines of approach to other aspects of early human
abilities. One way that we can try to assess early human cognitive ability
is by examining the way stone tools and other artifacts were made.
deSign in TooL ManufaCTure. Whereas the production of simple pebble

tools—for instance by Homo habilis—may perhaps be considered a simple,
habitual act, not unlike a chimpanzee breaking off a stick to poke at an ant hill,
the fashioning by Homo erectus of so beautiful an object as an Acheulian hand-
axe seems more advanced.
So far, however, that is just a subjective impression. How do we investigate
it further? One way is to measure, by experiment, the amount of time taken
in the manufacturing process. A more rigorous quantitative approach, as
developed by Glynn Isaac, is to study the range of variation in an assemblage
of artifacts. For if the toolmaker has, within his or her cognitive map, some
enduring notion of what the end product should be, one finished tool should
be much like another. Isaac distinguished a tendency through time to produce
an increasingly well-defined variety or assemblage of tool types. This implies
that each person making tools had a notion of different tool forms, no doubt
destined for different functions. Planning and design in tool manufacture
thus become relevant to our consideration of the cognitive abilities of early
hominins, abilities that moreover distinguish them from higher apes, such
as the chimpanzee.
The production of a stone tool, a pot, a bronze artifact, or any product of
a well-defined manufacturing process involves a complicated and often highly
standardized sequence of events. For early periods, such as the Paleolithic,
the study of the processes involved in making artifacts offers one of the few
insights available into the way cognitive structures underlay complex aspects
of human behavior. French prehistorians Claudine Karlin and Michèle Julien
analyzed the sequence of events necessary for the production of blades in the
Magdalenian period of the French Upper Paleolithic; many other production
processes can be investigated along similar lines.
ProCureMenT of MaTeriaLS and PLanning TiMe. Another way of

investigating the cognitive behavior of early hominins is to consider planning
time, defined as the time between the planning of an act and its execution.
For instance, if the raw material used to manufacture a stone tool comes from
a specific rock outcrop, but the tool itself is produced some distance away
(as documented by waste flakes produced in its manufacture), that would
seem to indicate some enduring intention or foresight by the person who
transported the raw material. Similarly, the transport of natural or finished
objects, whether tools, seashells, or attractive fossils, as has been documented,
indicates at least a continuing interest in them, or the intention of using

Deliberate burial of the dead: a young girl them, or a sense of “possession.” The study of such objects, by the techniques
(left, aged nine to ten) and an adolescent
boy (right, aged twelve to thirteen) buried
of characterization discussed in Chapter 7 and other methods, has now been
head to head at Sungir, northeast of undertaken in a systematic way.
Moscow, c. 27,000 years ago. They wore
a variety of pendants, bracelets, and other
ornaments, their clothes were covered with deLiberaTe buriaL of HuMan reMainS. From the Upper Paleolithic period
thousands of ivory beads, and the boy wore
a belt of fox teeth. The entire burial was
onward there are many well-established cases of human burial, where the body
covered in red ocher. or bodies have been deliberately laid to rest within a dug grave, sometimes
accompanied by ornaments of personal adornment. Evidence is emerging,
however, from even earlier periods. The act of burial itself implies some kind of
respect or feeling for the deceased individual, and perhaps some notion of an
afterlife (although that point is less easy to demonstrate). Adornment seems
to imply the existence of the idea that objects of decoration can enhance the
individual’s appearance, whether in terms of beauty or prestige or otherwise.
A good Upper Paleolithic example is the discovery made at Sungir, some
200 km (125 miles) northeast of Moscow, Russia, and dating from c. 27,000 years
ago: burials of a man and two children together with mammoth ivory spears,
stone tools, ivory daggers, small animal carvings, and thousands of ivory beads.
In assessing such finds, we must be sure to understand the formation
processes—in particular what may have happened to the burial after it was
made. For example, animal skeletons have been discovered alongside human
remains in graves. Traditionally this would have been taken as proof that
animals were deliberately buried with the humans as part of some ritual act.
Now, however, it is thought possible that in certain cases animals scavenging
for food found their way into these burials and died accidentally—thus leaving
false clues to mislead archaeologists.
rePreSenTaTionS. Any object, and any drawing or painting on a surface

that can be unhesitatingly recognized as a depiction—that is, a representation
of an object in the real world (and not simply a mechanical reproduction of
one, as a fossil is)—is a symbol. General questions about representations and

depictions for all time periods are discussed later (see pp. 260–72). For the
Paleolithic period, there are two issues of prime importance: evaluating the
date (and hence in some cases the authenticity), and confirming the status
as a depiction. Although it has long been believed that the earliest depictions
are of Upper Paleolithic date and produced by Homo sapiens, increasing
numbers of earlier examples are forcing us to reexamine this supposition.
So far the earliest well-dated product that might securely be described
as “art,” or at least as “graphic design” is a zigzag engraving on a freshwater
mussel shell from Trinil, Java, dating to at least 430,000 years ago. Such a date
suggests it was created by Homo erectus. An incised network pattern has also
been found on a piece of red ocher from the Blombos Cave, South Africa, dating
to 77,000 years ago. It is believed to be the work of our own species Homo sapiens.
(Right) Mussel shell from Trinil, Java, with

engraved zigzags, at least 430,000 years old.
(Below right) Piece of red ocher with

abstract engravings, from the Blombos Cave,
South Africa, dating to c. 77,000 years ago.

Paleolithic Art figures that can be identified, most are N
animals. Very few humans and virtually
FRANCE
no objects were drawn on cave walls.
Figures vary greatly in size, from tiny to
more than 5 m (16.5 ft.) in length. Some Atlantic
Ocean Lascaux
Cave Art are easily visible and accessible, while Chauvet
Cussac
Much has been written about the others are carefully hidden in recesses
Ice Age caves of western Europe, of the caves. Can
tabr
Cosquer
ia
decorated with images of animals and The first systematic approach to Pyren
e es n
a
abstract markings. Clustered in specific the study of cave art (“parietal art”) ne
rra
te
regions—most notably the Périgord and was that of the French archaeologist di a
e Se
PORTUGAL
M
Pyrenees in southwestern France and André Leroi-Gourhan, working in the
SPAIN
Cantabria in northern Spain—they span 1960s. Following the lead of Annette
Paleolithic coastline
the whole of the Upper Paleolithic, from Laming-Emperaire, Leroi-Gourhan
200 miles
about 30,000 bce onward. The majority argued that the pictures formed
300 km
of the art, however, dates to the latter compositions. Previously they had
part of the Ice Age, to the Solutrean been seen as random accumulations of
and especially the Magdalenian period, individual images, representing simple (Above) Principal locations of Paleolithic cave art
in western Europe.
ending around 10,000 bce. “hunting magic” or “fertility magic.”
The cave artists used a great range of Leroi-Gourhan studied the positions
techniques, from simple finger tracings and associations of the animal of caves. Other species (e.g. ibex,
and modeling in clay to engravings and figures in each cave. He established mammoth, and deer) are located
bas-relief sculpture, and from hand that horse and bison are by far the in more peripheral positions, while
stencils to paintings using two or three most commonly depicted animals, less commonly drawn animals
colors. Much of the art is unintelligible— accounting for about 60 percent of the (e.g. rhinoceroses, felines, and bears)
and therefore classified by scholars as total, and that they are concentrated often cluster in the cave depths.
“signs” or abstract marks—but of the on what seem to be the central panels Leroi-Gourhan therefore felt sure
(Left) The spectacular paintings of (Below) An engraving of a

Chauvet Cave, southern France, mammoth from Cussac Cave in
discovered in 1994, depict more the Dordogne, France.
than 440 animals.

Portable art. (Above) Engraving of three lions on a bone
from the cave of La Vache in southwestern France. (Left
and below) Three bone carvings from the cave of La
Garma, northern Spain. (Right) A recently discovered
“Venus figurine” in mammoth ivory from the open-air site
of Zaraisk, near Moscow, Russia.
he had found the “blueprint” for the that “cave art” was produced in the
way each cave had been decorated. open air. Indeed this was probably the
We now know that this scheme is too most common form of art production
generalized. Every cave is different, and in the Ice Age, but the vast majority of
some have only one figure, whereas it has succumbed to the weathering
others (e.g. Lascaux in southwestern of many millennia, leaving us with the
France) have hundreds. Nevertheless, heavily skewed sample of figures that
Leroi-Gourhan’s work established that survived more readily inside caves. Only
there is a basic thematic unity—profiles a dozen sites are known so far, in Spain,
of a limited range of animals—and a Portugal, and France, but they comprise
clearly intentional layout of figures hundreds of figures, mostly pecked into
on the walls. Currently, research is rocks, which by their style and content
exploring how each cave’s decoration are clearly Ice Age in date.
was adapted to the shape of its walls,
and even to the areas in the cave Portable Art
where the human voice resonates Ice Age portable (“mobiliary”) art
most effectively. comprises thousands of engravings
New finds continue to be made— and carvings on small objects of
an average of one cave per year, stone, bone, antler, and ivory. The
including major discoveries in France, great majority of identifiable figures
such as Cosquer Cave (1991) near are animals, but perhaps the most
Marseille, the Ice Age entrance of famous pieces are the so-called
which is now drowned beneath the “Venus figurines,” such as the limestone
sea, and the spectacular Chauvet Cave Venus of Willendorf, from Austria.
(1994) in the Ardèche, with its unique These depict females of a wide span
profusion of depictions of rhinoceroses of ages and types, and are by no
and big cats. means limited to the handful of obese
In the 1980s and 1990s, however, specimens that are often claimed to Venus figurine from the Balzi Rossi caves
a series of discoveries also revealed be characteristic. at Grimaldi, northern Italy.
Paleolithic Art 259

We should, however, note the enormous cognitive significance of the
act of depiction itself, in all the vividness seen in the art of Chauvet or
Lascaux in France, or Altamira in Spain. We do not yet understand very well,
however, why such representation was rare in the Pleistocene (Ice Age)
period, or what the significance to their creators of the remarkable depiction
of animals in the painted caves of France and Spain may have been (see box,
pp. 258–59).
Working with Symbols

We are interested in studying how symbols were used. Perhaps we cannot
fully understand their meaning, if that implies the full meaning they had
for the original users (without going into a profound analysis, we can define
“meaning” as “the relationship between symbols”). We can, however, hope
to establish some—but by no means all—of the original relationships between
the symbols observed.
In the pages that follow we shall consider cognitive archaeology in terms
of five different uses to which symbols are put.
• A basic step is the establishment of place by marking and delimiting

territory and the territory of the community, often with the use of symbolic
Key Concepts markers and monuments, thereby constructing a perceived landscape,
Working with Symbols generally with a sacred as well as a secular dimension (a land of memories).
• A fundamental cognitive step is the development of symbols of
The human species is distinguished measurement—as in units of time, length, and weight—which help us
from other life forms by its use of organize our relationships with the natural world.
symbols • Symbols allow us to cope with the future world, as instruments of
planning. They help us define our intentions more clearly, by making
Symbols are used by humans for
a variety of purposes, some of
models for some future intended action, for example plans of towns
which can be recognized in the or cities.
archaeological record: • Symbols are used to regulate and organize relations between human
beings. Money is a good example of this, and with it the whole notion
• The marking of place and the
that some material objects have a higher value than others. Beyond this
definition of territory
is a broader category of symbols, such as the badges of rank in an army,
• The construction of systems
of measurement that have to do with the exercise of power in a society.
• Design, mapping, and the • Symbols are used to represent and to try to regulate human relations
planning of future actions with the Other World, the world of the supernatural or the transcendental—
• Shaping and reflecting social
which leads on to the archaeology of religion and cult.
realities, including identity and
power relationships
• Communicating with No doubt there are other kinds of uses for symbols, but this rather
supernatural powers in the simplistic listing will help us in our discussion of how we should set
Other World about analyzing them.

Establishing Place: The Location of Memory
One of the fundamental aspects of the cognition of the individual is the
establishment of place, often through the establishment of a center, which
in a permanent settlement is likely to be the hearth of the home. For a
community another significant place is likely to be the burial place of the
ancestral dead, whether within the house or at some collective tomb or shrine.
For a larger community, whether sedentary or mobile, there may be some
communal meeting place, a sacred center for periodic gatherings.
These various features, some of them deliberate symbolic constructions,
others more functional works that nonetheless are seen to have meaning—
the home, the tilled agricultural land, the pasture—together constitute a
constructed landscape in which the individual lives. As some archaeologists
have pointed out, this landscape structures the experience and the worldview
of that individual. These observations are just as relevant to small-scale
societies as to state societies. Many great cities from China to Cambodia and
from Sri Lanka to the Maya lowlands and Peru are laid out on cosmological
principles, allowing the ruler to ensure harmony between his subjects and
the prevailing sacred and supernatural forces. But the sacred center can be
important in smaller societies also, and many of those that appear to have
had a corporate structure rather than a powerful central leader were capable of
major public works—the temples of Malta and the megalithic centers of Carnac,
The ceremonial center of Orkney, off
the north coast of Scotland, a ritual in Brittany, and Orkney, off the north coast of Scotland, are good examples, as
landscape in which individuals lived and
well as Stonehenge and Chaco Canyon. Such monuments can also be used to
which in turn shaped their experience
and worldview. The Ring of Brodgar structure time and can operate to facilitate access to the other, sacred world.
(below left) was one element of a
But these aspects of life operate also at a local level, not only at great
complex and rich sacred landscape
(below right), which demonstrates centers. So the entire countryside becomes a complex of constructed
that it was not only large, organized
landscapes, with meaning as well as of practical use. The landscape is
state societies that were capable of
creating major public works. composed of places bringing memories, and the history of the community is
Ring of Bookan N
Bookan
Comet Stone
Ring of
Brodgar Ness of Brodgar
Barnhouse
Watch Stone Maesowe

Loch of Stenness
Odin’s Stone
Stones of Stenness
Barnhouse Stone
0 1 km
Unstan
0 0.5 miles

told with reference to its significant places. Landscape archaeology thus
has a cognitive dimension, which takes it far beyond the preoccupation
with productive land use characteristic of a purely materialist approach:
the landscape has social and spiritual meaning as well as utility.
Measuring the World

One aspect of an individual’s cognition we can readily reconstruct is the
way in which it copes with measurement or quantitative description. The
development of units was a fundamental cognitive step. In many cases, they
can be recovered archaeologically—especially units of time, length, and weight.
The measurement of time is implied whenever a calendrical system can be
documented. It is implied also when an alignment is evident that preserves
the direction of the sun (or moon) at one of the major turning points. That is
well known to be the case for the major axis of Stonehenge, the great Neolithic
monument in England, which is oriented toward the midsummer sunrise,
and also for the stone tomb of Newgrange in Ireland, dating from c. 3200 bce,
the entrance passage of which is oriented toward the midwinter sunrise.
The existence of measurements of weight can be demonstrated by
the discovery of objects of standard form that prove to be multiples of
a recurrent quantity (by weight), which we can assume to be a standard
unit. Such finds are made in many early civilizations. Sometimes the
observations are reinforced by the discovery of markings on the objects
themselves, which accurately record how many times the standard the
piece in question weighs. Systems of coinage are invariably graded using
measurement by weight, as well as by material (gold, silver, etc.), although
their purpose is to measure differences in value. More directly relevant here
are discoveries of actual weights.
An excellent example comes from the site of Mohenjodaro, a major city
of the Indus Valley civilization around 2500–2000 bce. Attractive and carefully
worked cubes of colored stone were found there. They proved to be multiples
of what we may recognize as a constant unit of mass (namely 0.836 g, or
0.03 oz), multiplied by such integers as 1, 4, or 8, up to 64, then 320 and 1600.
It can be argued that this simple discovery indicates that:
1 the society in question had developed a concept equivalent to our

own notion of weight or mass;
2 the use of this concept involved the operation of units of measure;
3 there was a system of numbering, involving hierarchical numerical
Units of weight: stone cubes from

categories (e.g. tens and units), in this case apparently based on
Mohenjodaro, Pakistan, were produced the fixed ratio of 16:1;
in multiples of 0.836 g (0.03 oz). Scale pans
4 the weight system was used for practical purposes (as the finding
indicate the practical use to which the
cubes were put. of scale pans indicates);

5 there probably existed a notion of equivalence, on the basis of weight
among different materials, and hence, it may follow, a ratio of value
between them;
6 this inferred concept of value may have entailed some form of constant
rate of exchange between commodities.
Items 5 and 6 are more hypothetical than the others in the list. But it seems
a good example of the way that superficially simple discoveries can, when
subjected to analysis, yield important information about the concepts and
procedures of the communities in question.
Planning: Maps for the Future

The cognitive map that each one of us carries in our mind’s eye allows us
to conceive of what we are trying to do, to formulate a plan, before we do it.
Only rarely does the archaeologist find direct material evidence of this, but
sometimes the product is so complex or so sophisticated that a plan prepared
in advance, or a formalized procedure, can be postulated.
It is, of course, difficult to demonstrate purposive planning, if by that is
meant the prior formulation of a conscious plan in the construction of some
(Below left) The regularity in layout of the
Indus Valley city of Mohenjodaro—with work. At first sight, a settlement like Çatalhöyük in Turkey (c. 6500 bce), or
main streets approximately at right angles— a sector of such an early Sumerian town as Ur (c. 2300 bce), suggest prior
hints at conscious town planning.
planning. But when we look at the operation of various natural processes
(Below right) The Çatalhöyük village we can see that effects of very high regularity can occur simply by repetition
layout (bottom) may have been no more
consciously planned than the cells in within a well-defined scheme. There is no need to suggest that the polyps
a beehive (top). in a coral reef, or the worker bees in a beehive, are operating according to

a conscious plan: they are simply getting on with the job, according to
an innate procedure. The layouts of Çatalhöyük and Ur may be no more
sophisticated than that. To demonstrate prior planning it is necessary to
have some clear evidence that the scheme of construction was envisaged
at the outset. Such proof, however, is rarely forthcoming. A few actual maps
have come down to us from prehistoric or early historic times; but most
probably represent depictions or representations of existing features, not
the planning of future ones. Just occasionally, however, we find models of
buildings that may have been constructed before the building itself. There
are five or six models of Neolithic temples on the Mediterranean island of
Malta that might represent planning in this way: they certainly show close
attention to architectural detail.
Such direct projections in symbolic form of the cognitive map of the
designer are rare. Sculptors’ trial pieces and models, such as have been found
at the ancient Egyptian city of Tell el-Amarna, are likewise unusual discoveries.
An alternative strategy is to seek ways of showing that regularities
observed in the finished product are such that they could not have come about
by accident. That seems to be the case for the passage grave of Newgrange
in Ireland, dating from c. 3200 bce. At sunrise on midwinter’s day the sun
shines directly down the passage and into the tomb chamber. There is only
a low probability that the alignment would be by chance in the approximate
direction of the sun’s rising or setting at one of its two major turning points
on the horizon. But it is unlikely also that, in terms of altitude, the passage
of such a tomb would be aligned on the horizon at all. In fact, there is a special
Deliberate alignment: the rays of the
midwinter sun illuminate the passage
“roof box” with a slit in it, over the entrance, which seems to have been made
and chamber at Newgrange, Ireland. to permit the midwinter sun to shine through.
Roof box
Light
End
recess
Entrance stone

Often, careful planning can be deduced from the methods used in a
particular craft process. Any metal objects produced by the lost-wax method
undoubtedly represent the result of a complex, controlled, premeditated
sequence, where a version of the desired shape was modeled in wax before
the clay mold was constructed round it, which then allowed the shape in
question to be cast in bronze or gold. Another example is the standardization
in many early metal-using communities of the proportions of different metals
in objects made of alloyed metal. The constant level of ten percent tin found
in the bronze objects of the early Bronze Age in Europe is not fortuitous: it is
evidently the result of carefully controlled procedures that must themselves
have been the result of generations of trial and experiment. The use of a unit
of length will also document some measure of planning.
Complete regularity in layout, where there is a grid of streets at right angles,
evenly spaced, is also a convincing indication of town planning. Traditionally,
it is claimed that the Greek architect Hippodamus of Miletus (in the sixth
century bce) was the first town planner. But ancient Egypt furnishes much
earlier examples—for instance, in the town built by the pharaoh Akhenaten at
Tell el-Amarna, which dates from the fourteenth century bce. The cities of the
Indus Valley civilization around 2000 bce also show some very regular features.
They are not laid out on an entirely rectilinear grid, but the main thoroughfares
certainly intersect approximately at right angles. How much of this was
deliberate prior planning, and how much was simply unplanned urban growth,
are questions that have not yet been systematically investigated.
A stronger case for deliberate town planning can be made when the major
axis of a city is aligned on an astronomically significant feature, as discussed
earlier (see pp. 262–63), for example the great Mesoamerican and Andean
centers. Paul Wheatley, in his influential book The Pivot of the Four Quarters
(1971), has emphasized how the desire to harmonize the urban order with
the cosmic order influenced town planning. This seems to be true not just for
American civilizations but also for Indian, Chinese, and Southeast Asian ones
as well. The argument is reinforced when the urban order is supplemented
by a rich cosmic iconography, as in such cities as Angkor, capital of the Khmer
empire, in modern Cambodia.
Symbols of Organization and Power

Symbols are used for regulating and organizing people as well as the material
world. They may simply convey information from one person to another, as
with language or, as in the case of archival records, from one point in time to
another. But sometimes they are symbols of power, commanding obedience
and conformity, such as the giant statues of rulers found in many civilizations.
Power relations are sometimes documented graphically, as in the
statues of the Egyptian pharaohs, or on the splendid stelae and reliefs of

the Maya. For example, Lintel 24 from Yaxchilan, illustrated below, shows
the ruler (“Shield Jaguar III”) and his wife during a bloodletting ritual. The
glyphs that frame their images give details of their names, the calendar date
(October 25, 709 ce), and a description of the rite. The images do of course
have religious significance, but they also emphasize the role of the ruler
and his family in subjecting themselves to this painful ritual for the good
of the community. Shield Jaguar holds aloft a flaming torch. He has a
magnificent headdress, with feathers at the rear and the shrunken head
of a past sacrificial victim tied to the top of his head by a headband.
More often, however, power relations are not documented pictorially but
have to be inferred from the association of prestigious artifacts made, often
with beautiful craftsmanship, from exotic materials.
Archaeological evidence on its own can in fact yield evidence of scales
of value, as work on the analysis of finds from the late Neolithic cemetery
Shield Jaguar III

the captor of
5 5Eb
Eb1515Mac
Mac he is Itletting
is hisblood with?a It?is the captive’s name
9.13.17.15.12
9.13.17.15.12 image in fiery 4 Katun
penance (undeciphered)
28(October
Oct. 25, penance spear ofLord
the
AD 709
709 ce) 4 Katun
Lord Divine Pa’chan Lord
(name of local dynasty)
It is her
image in
penance
Lady ?
Xook
Lady
K’abal
Xook
Ix
Kaloomte’
(title)
Lintel 24 from Yaxchilan, showing

Shield Jaguar III and his wife, Lady
K’abal Xook, during a sacred ritual.
The glyphs that frame their images
give details of their names and titles,
the calendar date, and a description
of the rite.

at Varna in Bulgaria, dating from c. 4000 bce, has shown. Numerous golden
artifacts were discovered in the cemetery, constituting what is the earliest
known major find of gold anywhere in the world. But it cannot simply be
assumed that the gold is of high value (its relative abundance in the cemetery
might imply the opposite).
Three arguments, however, can be used to support the conclusion that the
gold here was indeed of great worth:
1 Its use for artifacts with evidently symbolic status: e.g. to decorate the
haft of a perforated stone axe that, through its fine work and delicate
nature, was clearly not intended for use.
2 Its use for ornaments at particularly significant parts of the body:
e.g. for face decorations, for a penis sheath.
3 Its use in simulation: sheet gold was used to cover a stone axe to give the
impression of solid gold. Such a procedure normally indicates that the
material hidden is less valuable than the covering material.
The demonstration that gold objects were highly valued by society at this
time in ancient Bulgaria also implies that the individuals with whom the
Deducing scales of value: the great worth of gold finds were associated had a high social status. The importance of
the gold from Varna, Bulgaria, is suggested
by, among other things, its use to decorate
burials as sources of evidence for social status and ranking was discussed
significant parts of the body. in Chapter 5. Here we are more interested in the use of grave-goods, such as
the Varna gold-covered axes, and other discoveries, as symbols of authority
and power. The display of such authority is not very pronounced in such a
society as the one excavated at Varna, but it becomes more blatant the more
hierarchical and stratified the society becomes.
The Archaeology of Religion

One leading English dictionary defines religion as: “Action or conduct
indicating a belief in, or reverence for, and desire to please, a divine ruling
power.” Religion thus involves a framework of beliefs, and these relate to
supernatural or superhuman beings or forces that go beyond the everyday
material world. In other words superhuman beings are conceptualized by
humans, and have a place in the shared cognitive map of the world.
One problem that archaeologists face is that these belief systems are not
always given expression in material culture. And when they are—in what can
be termed the archaeology of cult—there is the problem that such actions are
not always clearly separated from the other actions of everyday life: cult can be
embedded within everyday functional activity, and thus difficult to distinguish
from it archaeologically. The first task of the archaeologist is to recognize the
evidence of cult for what it is, and not make the old mistake of classifying
as religious activity every action in the past that we do not understand.

reCogniTion of CuLT. If we are to distinguish cult from other activities,
such as the largely secular ceremonial that may attend a head of state (which
can also have very elaborate symbolism), it is important not to lose sight of
the transcendent or supernatural object of the cult activity. Religious ritual
involves the performance of expressive acts of worship toward the deity or
transcendent being. In this there are generally at least four main components
(we will see below how these may then help us draw up a list of aspects that
are identifiable archaeologically):
• Focusing of attention. The act of worship both demands and induces a state
of heightened awareness or religious excitement. In communal acts of
worship, this invariably requires a range of attention-focusing devices,
including a sacred location, architecture (e.g. temples), light, sounds, and
smell, to ensure that all eyes are directed toward the crucial ritual acts.
• Boundary zone between this world and the next. The focus of ritual activity is the
boundary area between this world and the Other World. It is a special and
mysterious region with hidden dangers. There are risks of pollution and
of failing to comply with the appropriate procedures: ritual washing and
cleanliness are therefore emphasized.
• Presence of the deity. For ritual to be effective, the deity or supernatural force
must in some sense be present. It is divine as well as human attention that
needs to be heightened. In most societies, the deity is symbolized by
a material form or image: this need be no more than a very simple symbol—
for instance, the outline of a sign or container, the contents of which are not
seen—or it may be a three-dimensional cult image, such as a statue.
• Participation and offering. Worship makes demands on the celebrant. These
include not only words and gestures of prayer and respect, but also often
active participation involving movement, and perhaps eating and drinking.
Frequently, it involves also the offering of material things to the deity,
both by sacrifice and gift.
An excellent example of cult activity visible in the archaeological record

is offered by the site of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey (see box overleaf). Another
is the great ceremonial center at Chavín de Huantar in north-central Peru,
which flourished from 850 to 200 bce. The most immediately obvious feature
of the site is its imposing architecture, comprising a complex of stone-faced
platforms built in the earliest phase on a U-shaped plan and set apart from
living areas at the site. Ritual involving both conspicuous public display and
hidden mysteries is implied by the presence of an open circular sunken plaza
that could hold 300 participants, and hidden underground passageways,
the most important of which led to a narrow chamber dominated by a
4.5-m- (14-ft.-9-in.-) high granite shaft known as the Lanzón (Great Image).

SOUTH
AMERICA
l
Chavín de
Huantar
(Above) Perspective and plan views of the early U-shaped platforms at Chavín, with a section through
the central passageway showing the narrow chamber dominated by the Lanzón or Great Image.
(Above left) Two views of the Lanzón or

Great Image (center, complete image;
above, rollout drawing), depicting a fanged
anthropomorphic being.
(Right) Transformation of a masked shaman

(near) into a jaguar (far). These sculptures
were displayed on the outer wall of the
temple, and hint at drug-induced rituals.

The World’s Neolithic of the Levant, Pre-Pottery
Neolithic A, there are no traces of
Oldest Sanctuary: cultivated plants at the site, and the
TURKEY
Göbekli Tepe
Göbekli Tepe fauna includes only wild species, such
as gazelle, wild cattle, wild ass, red
deer, and wild pig. The society that
built and used the site was effectively
one of hunter-gatherers. But this was Upon these pillars are carvings
The site of Göbekli Tepe, near the not a settlement site. in relief of animals—lions, foxes,
town of Urfa in southeastern Turkey, gazelle, wild boar, wild asses, aurochs,
can lay claim to be the world’s oldest Carved Pillars snakes, birds, insects, and spiders.
sanctuary. Dating from between 9000 The most characteristic feature of Its previous excavator, the late Klaus
and 8000 bce, it is a large mound 300 m Göbekli Tepe are the pillars, arranged Schmidt, suggested that the pillars
(1,000 ft.) in diameter, containing a to create oval structures including up themselves represent stylized humans,
series of enclosures, perhaps as many to twelve such pillars, interconnected the horizontal and vertical elements
as twenty, of which four are under by stone benches. Each is a T-shaped representing the head and body, for
excavation by a team of the German monolith of limestone standing several
Archaeological Institute in Istanbul. meters high and weighing up to 12 tons.
A view of the excavations at Göbekli Tepe. Large
Although radiocarbon dates set it The largest, not yet fully excavated, T-shaped stone pillars connected by walls and
contemporary with the very earliest seems to be 5 m (16 ft.) high. benches form enclosures.

A wild boar and other animals carved in
relief on one of the pillars at Göbekli Tepe.
when those areas are excavated.

Certainly it seems reasonable to
suggest that Göbekli Tepe was a special
central place, a ritual focus for the
regional population. Contemporary
villages are known nearby: Nevali
Çori, also excavated by Schmidt, was
one such. In it was a small enclosure,
likewise containing T-shaped megalithic
pillars and life-size limestone sculptures
of humans and animals, which may be
regarded as a small sanctuary.
But Göbekli Tepe was much larger
and more specialized, lacking the
residential accommodation of the
village. Ritual practice at this special
site seems highly likely. As we have
seen, funerary ritual is possible, but
not yet documented. Nor is there yet
evidence of “deities” (in the sense of
beings with transcendent powers)—
there is no iconography to suggest
supernatural beings. It is possible,
of course, that the rituals at the site
involved veneration for ancestors.
So it might be premature to speak
of “cult” if that is taken to imply the
worship of deities.
the pillars sometimes show arms and discussed in this chapter. Moreover What is remarkable, however, is
hands in low relief. There are also three- they are rich in animal symbolism. that the use of Göbekli Tepe seems to
dimensional sculptures of animals, Klaus Schmidt suggested that funerary precede the development of farming in
mainly boar, that seem to have been rituals were practiced there, which this area—although the site lies close
placed on the tops of walls. he suggested would account for the to the region where einkorn wheat
very considerable labor involved in the was first domesticated. It may have
Analysis construction of each of the enclosures. been visited seasonally and need not
These enclosures certainly suggest But no burials have yet been found: document a sedentary population.
the practice of ritual, with their Schmidt predicted that they will be But for the archaeologist interested
special architectural forms, meeting discovered beneath the benches or in the origins of farming in this very
the “focusing of attention” criteria behind the walls of the enclosures area, it is a notable and intriguing site.
The World’s Oldest Sanctuary: Göbekli Tepe 271

The carving on this shaft of a fanged anthropomorphic being, its location
in a central chamber facing east along the temple’s main axis, and its size
and workmanship all suggest that this was the principal cult image of the
site. Moreover, some 200 other stone sculptures, dominated by images of
caymans, jaguars, eagles, and snakes, were found in and around the temple.
A cache of more than 500 broken high-quality pots containing food found
in an underground gallery may have been offerings (though the excavator
believes they were used for storage). There is some evidence for drug-induced
rituals and the possibility that canals beneath the site were used for ritual
washing and to create roaring sounds to heighten the impact of ceremonies.
The study of Chavín thus demonstrates that a careful archaeological and
art-historical analysis of different kinds of evidence can produce sound proof
of cult activity—even for a site and society concerning which there are no
written records whatsoever.
The Impact of Literacy

Symbols of depiction provide us with perhaps our most direct insight into the
cognition of an individual or a society for pre-literate periods. Among literate
communities, however, written words—those deceptively direct symbols used
to describe the world—inevitably dominate the evidence. The earliest writing
systems around the world are summarized on the map below.
Ancient literature in all its variety, from poems and plays to political
Map showing locations of the world’s
statements and early historical writings, provides rich insights into the
earliest writing systems. cognitive world of the great civilizations. But, to use such evidence accurately
Runic alphabet 2nd century ce Aegean scripts: Linear A (Crete) 18th century bce
Linear B (Crete & Greece) c. 1450 bce
Greek alphabet (Crete, Greece, & WesternTurkey) c. 750 bce
Hittite hieroglyphs c. 1450 bce
Etruscan alphabet c. 700 bce Mesopotamian cuneiform Japanese script

c. 3100 bce 5th century ce
Zapotec/Mixtec script c. 600 bce Chinese characters
c. 1200 bce
Brahmi alphabet c. 350 bce
Maya hieroglyphs c. 350 bce Egyptian hieroglyphs c. 3000 bce

Phoenician alphabet c. 1000 bce
Indus Valley
script c. 2500 bce
Easter Island script

(rongorongo) c. 1500 ce

and effectively, we need to understand something of the social context of the
use of writing in different societies.
The very existence of writing implies a major extension of human cognitive
processes. Written symbols have proved the most effective system ever
devised by humans not only to describe the world around them, but also to
communicate with and control people, to organize society as a whole, and
to pass on to posterity the accumulated knowledge of a society.
Literacy in Classical Greece

The importance of literacy is well illustrated by the case of Classical Greece.
In several ancient civilizations writing was practiced only by a small segment
of the population, notably scribes—for instance in ancient Egypt or
Mesopotamia, and the same was probably true in Mesoamerica. In Greece,
however, it is likely that many who had the status of citizens were able to read.
For extended texts, whether works of literature or accounts, the Greeks
wrote on papyrus. Examples of such texts have been found at Pompeii and
in the very dry conditions of the Faiyum depression in Egypt. For public
inscriptions, the Greeks used stone or bronze, although notices that were not
of permanent interest were put on display on whitened boards (the simple
alphabetic script of the Greeks favored such relatively casual use). Among the
functions of Greek inscriptions carved on stone or bronze were:
Potsherds (ostraka) inscribed with

two famous Greek names: Hippokrates
• Public decrees by the ruling body (council or assembly)
(above) and Themistokles (below). • Awards of honors by the ruling body to an individual or group
• Treaties between states
• Letters from a monarch to a city
• Lists of taxes imposed on tributary states
• Inventories of property and dedications belonging to a deity
• Rules for divination (understanding omens), e.g. from the flight of birds
• Building accounts, records of specifications, contracts, and payments
• Public notices: e.g. lists for military service
• Boundary stones and mortgage stones
• Epitaphs
• Curses laid on whomever might disturb a particular tomb
It is clear from this list what an important role writing had within the
democratic government of the Greek states. A better indication of literacy
and of the role of writing in Greek daily life, however, is given by the various
objects bearing inscriptions, and by comments scrawled on walls (graffiti).
One type of object, the ostrakon, was a voting ticket in the form of a fragment
of pottery with the name of the individual—for (or against) whom the vote
was being cast—incised on it. Many have been found in Athens where
The Impact of Literacy 273

(by the system of “ostracism”) public men could, by a vote of the assembly,
be driven into exile. Other Greek uses of writing on a variety of objects were:
• On coins, to show the issuing authority (city)

• To label individuals shown in scenes on wall paintings and painted vases
• To label prizes awarded in competitions
• To label dedications made to a deity
• To indicate the price of goods
• To give the signature of the artist or craftsperson
• To indicate jury membership (on a jury ticket)
These simple inscriptions enable us to glimpse aspects of everyday life and

even to identify and learn things about individuals. The British Museum
has a black-figure drinking cup of c. 530 bce, made in Athens and imported
to Taranto, Italy, bearing the inscription: “I am Melousa’s prize: she won
the maiden’s carding contest.” The cognitive archaeology of ancient Greece
thus inevitably draws to a great extent on the insights provided by such
literary evidence. But we should not imagine that cognitive archaeology is
thus necessarily dependent on literary sources to generate or test its theories.
Textual evidence is indeed of paramount importance in helping us
understand ways of thought among literate societies, but there are in
addition purely archaeological sources that may be used to create theories
about the thought processes of ancient individuals and peoples, and purely
archaeological criteria to judge their validity. Moreover, literary sources
may themselves be biased in ways that need to be fully assessed before
any attempt can be made to match such sources with evidence from the
archaeological record.
Study Questions
1 What are symbols and how do they relate to cognitive archaeology?

2 What are some of the ways in which humans use symbols?
3 How do archaeologists and anthropologists investigate the cognitive
abilities of our hominin ancestors?
4 What are some of the ways in which past people measured their world?
5 How do archaeologists recognize religion or cult in the archaeological
record?
6 What was the role of writing in Classical Greek daily life?

Summary
in THiS CHaPTer we have shown how archaeological evidence can be used to
provide insights into the way of thinking of cultures and civilizations long dead.
WHeTHer iT be evidenCe for measurement, means of organization and power,

or cult activity, there are good archaeological procedures for analyzing and testing
cognitive hypotheses about the past. An archaeological project may focus on one
aspect of the way ancient people thought (for example, in the search for a possible
standard unit of measurement), or it may be much broader (for example, the work
at Chavín). While textual evidence may be of crucial importance in supporting
or helping to assess cognitive claims—as in Mesoamerica or Mesopotamia—
cognitive archaeology does not depend on literary sources for its validity.
Further Reading
The following works provide an
introduction to the study of the attitudes
and beliefs of ancient humans: Lorblanchet, M. & Bahn, P. G. 2017. The
First Artists: In Search of the World’s
Arsuaga, J. L. 2003. The Neanderthal’s Oldest Art. Thames & Hudson:
Necklace: In Search of the First London & New York.
Thinkers. Four Walls Eight Windows: Renfrew, C. & Zubrow E. B. W. (eds).
New York. 1994. The Ancient Mind: Elements of
Aveni, A. F. (ed.). 2008. People and the Cognitive Archaeology. Cambridge
Sky: Our Ancestors and the Cosmos. University Press: Cambridge
Thames & Hudson: London & New York.
& New York. Renfrew, C. 2009. Prehistory: The
Bahn, P. G. 2016. Images of the Ice Age. Making of the Human Mind. Modern
Oxford University Press: Oxford. Library: New York.
Johnson, M. 2010. Archaeological
Theory. Blackwell: Oxford. [See p. 345 for a list of useful websites]

10 Why Did Things Change?
Explanation in Archaeology
Migrationist and Diffusionist Agency and Material

Explanations 278 Engagement 294
❑ Explaining Great Zimbabwe 281 Agency 294
Material Engagement 295
The Processual Approach 282
Marxist Archaeology 283 Study Questions 295
Evolutionary Archaeology 284 Summary 296
Further Reading 296
The Form of Explanation:
Specific or General? 284
Explanation:
One Cause or Several? 285
Monocausal Explanations:
The Origins of the State 286
Multivariate Explanations:
The Classic Maya Collapse 288
Postprocessual or Interpretive
Explanation 288
Structuralist Approaches 289
Critical Theory 289
❑ The Classic Maya Collapse 290
Neo-Marxist Thought 291

Symbol and Interaction 293
To answer the question “why?” is the most difficult task in archaeology.
We must go beyond simply describing the appearance of things and try to
understand the pattern of events.
This is the goal motivating many who take up the study of the human
past. There is a desire to learn something from the study of what is dead and
gone that is relevant for the conduct of our own lives and our societies today.
Archaeology, which allows us to study early and remote prehistoric periods as
well as the more recent historical ones, is unique among the human sciences
in offering a considerable time depth. Thus, if there are patterns to be found
among human affairs, the archaeological timescale may reveal them.
There is no agreed and accepted way of setting out to understand the
human past. A chapter such as this is therefore bound to be inconclusive, and
certain to be controversial. But it is a chapter worth writing and worth thinking
about, for it is in this area of inquiry that archaeological research is now most
active. The main debates have developed over the past forty years or so.
Traditional explanations of change in the past focused on the concepts
of diffusion and migration—they assumed that changes in one group must
have been caused either by the influence or influx of a neighboring and
superior group. But in the 1960s the development of the processual approach
of the so-called New Archaeology exposed the shortcomings of the earlier
explanations. It was realized that there was no well-established body of theory
to underpin archaeological inquiry (to a large extent this is still true, although
there have been many attempts).
The early New Archaeology involved the explicit use of theory and
of models, and above all of generalization. It was criticized, however, as
being too much concerned with ecological aspects of adaptation and with
efficiency, and with the purely utilitarian and functional aspects of living
(in other words, it was too “functionalist”). Meanwhile, an alternative
perspective, inspired by Marxism, was laying more stress on social relations
and the exercise of power.
10 • Why Did Things Change? 277

From the 1970s, in reaction to the processual “functionalists,” some
Key Concepts archaeologists favored a structuralist archaeology and then a postprocessual
Strategies of Explanation one. These approaches stressed that the ideas and beliefs of past societies
should not be overlooked in archaeological explanation.
Migrationist and Diffusionist: Since that time archaeologists have given more systematic attention to
these explanations rely on rather the way humans think, how they make and use symbols, and to what may
simple ideas of the supposed be described as cognitive issues. One approach, today termed “cognitive
migrations of peoples, or the often
archaeology,” seeks to work in the tradition of processual archaeology while
ill-defined spread of ideas
stressing social and cognitive aspects.
Processual: this approach So far there is no single, widely agreed approach.
attempts to provide more general
explanations (using, for instance, Migrationist and Diffusionist Explanations
evolutionary theory), sometimes
The New Archaeology made the shortcomings of traditional archaeological
using law-like formulations, and
(more successfully) framing
explanations much more apparent. These shortcomings can be made clearer
hypotheses and testing deductions in an example of the traditional method—the appearance of a new kind of
from these against the data pottery in a given area and period, the pottery being distinguished by shapes
not previously recognized and by new decorative motifs. The traditional
Postprocessual or Interpretive:
approach will very properly require a closer definition of this pottery style in
this explanation emphasizes the
specific context, drawing sometimes
space and time. The archaeologist will be expected to draw a distribution map
on structuralist or neo-Marxist of its occurrence, and also to establish its place in the stratigraphic sequence
ideas, stressing often the role at the sites where it occurs. The next step is to assign it to its place within an
(“agency”) of the individual, and archaeological culture.
avoiding the generalizations of the
Using the traditional approach, it was argued that each archaeological
processual approach
culture is the manifestation in material terms of a specific people—that is,
a well-defined ethnic group, detectable by the archaeologist by the method
just outlined. This is an ethnic classification, but of course the “people,”
being prehistoric, were given an arbitrary name. Usually, they were named
after the place where the pottery was first recognized (e.g. the Mimbres
people in the American Southwest), or sometimes after the pottery itself
(e.g. the Beaker Folk).
Next it was usual to see if it is possible to think in terms of a folk migration
to explain the changes observed. Could a convenient homeland for this group
of people be located? Careful study of the ceramic assemblages in adjoining
lands might suggest such a homeland, and perhaps even a migration route.
Alternatively, if the migration argument did not seem to work, a fourth
approach was to look for specific features of the cultural assemblage that have
parallels in more distant lands. If the whole assemblage cannot be attributed
to an external source, there may be specific features of it that can. Links may
be found with more “civilized” lands. If such parallels can be discovered,
the traditionalist would argue that these were the points of origin for the
features in our assemblage, and were transmitted to it by a process of cultural
diffusion. Indeed, before the advent of radiocarbon dating, these parallels
278 10 • Why Did Things Change?

could also be used to date the pottery finds in our hypothetical example,
because the features and traits lying closer to the “civilized” heartlands
would almost certainly already be dated through comparison with the latter’s
historical chronology.
It would be easy to find many actual examples of such explanations.
For instance, in the New World, the very striking developments in architecture
and other crafts in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico have been explained by
comparisons of precisely this kind with the more “advanced” civilizations
of Mexico to the south.
Recently it has in some cases been possible to document prehistoric
migrations by establishing the arrival of a new population using ancient
DNA obtained from human remains (see pp. 243–44). If, within a given area,
burials at a specific time show identifiable characteristics in their DNA that are
known to have existed earlier in a neighboring area, then it is clear that there
has been a movement of population. A now well-documented example is the
so-called “Kurgan migration,” which Marija Gimbutas suggested on traditional
archaeological grounds (mainly pottery styles) had brought nomads from the
steppe lands north of the Black Sea westward into Central Europe at the onset
of the early Bronze Age. Recent ancient DNA work gives strong support to her
Kurgan hypothesis.
Traditional explanations rest, however, on assumptions that are easily
challenged today. First, there is the notion among traditionalists that
archaeological “cultures” can somehow represent real entities rather than
merely the classificatory terms devised for the convenience of the scholar.
Second is the view that ethnic units or “peoples” can be recognized from the
archaeological record by equation with these notional cultures. It is in fact
clear that ethnic groups do not always stand out clearly in archaeological
remains. Third, it is assumed that when resemblances are noted between
the cultural assemblages of one area and another, this can be most readily
explained as the result of a migration of people. Of course, migrations
did indeed occur (see below), but they are not so easy to document
archaeologically as has often been supposed.
Finally, there is the principle of explanation through the diffusion of
culture. Today, it is felt that this explanation has sometimes been overplayed,
and nearly always oversimplified. For although contact between areas, not
least through trade, can be of great significance for the developments in each
area, the effects of this contact have to be considered in detail: explanation
simply in terms of diffusion is not enough.
Nevertheless it is worth emphasizing that migrations did take place in
the past, and on rare occasions this can be documented archaeologically.
The colonization of the Polynesian islands in the Pacific offers one example.
A complex of finds—especially pottery with incised decoration—known as the
Migrationist and Diffusionist Explanations 279

NEW SO
GUINEA LO
MON
NEW BRITAIN
ISL
AN
D S
LAPITA POTTERY
SAMOA
Distribution zone
of sites with
VANUATU
Lapita pottery
FIJI
NEW CALEDONIA
TONGA
N
AUSTRALIA
500 miles
1000 km
(Above) Migration: a positive example. Lapita culture provides a record of the rapid movement of islanders eastward
The question of the first settlement of the
Polynesian islands has apparently been
across a vast uninhabited area, from the northern New Guinea region to as
resolved by the discovery of the Lapita far as Samoa, between 1600 and 1000 bce (see map above). Also, innovations
culture, which is characterized in particular
by pottery with incised decoration. Lapita
are frequently made in one place and adopted in neighboring areas, and it
sites provide a record of the rapid movement is still perfectly proper to speak of the mechanism as one of diffusion (see
of islanders by boat, eastward from the
northern New Guinea region to as far as
illustration of the origins of the Roman alphabet below). A good example
Samoa in western Polynesia, between 1600 of what was first a migrationist explanation, and then became a diffusionist
and 1000 bce.
explanation, until it was subsequently rejected, is offered by the case of Great
Zimbabwe (see box opposite).
N REST OF
EUROPE
(Right) Diffusion: a positive example.

One instance where an innovation in one
place is known to have spread widely
ETRUSCAN
elsewhere through diffusion is that of the
alphabet. Around the twelfth century bce,
LATIN
on the Levantine coast, the Phoenicians
developed a simplified phonetic script to
write their Semitic language. By the early
first millennium bce, the script had been
adapted by the Greeks to write their own
PHOENICIAN
language. Then the Greek alphabet was
GREEK SCRIPT
modified in Italy, to write Etruscan and Latin,
the Roman language. It was through Latin 200 miles
that our own alphabet (known as the Roman 300 km
alphabet) came to much of Europe, and later
the rest of the world.

Explaining AFRICA
Great Zimbabwe Great

Zimbabwe
•
The remarkable monument of Great (Below) Carved soapstone bird found at Great
Zimbabwe, near Masvingo in modern Zimbabwe in 1903, and one of eight from the site.
The motif adorns the modern Zimbabwean flag,
Zimbabwe, has been the subject of banknotes, and coinage.
intense speculation ever since the
region was first explored by Europeans
in the nineteenth century. For here
was an impressive structure of great
sophistication, with beautifully
finished stonework.
Early scholars ascribed the site to
builders from “more civilized” lands to
the north. During a visit by the British
colonialist Cecil Rhodes, the local
Karanga chiefs were told that “the (Above) The conical tower is one of the most
Great Master” had come “to see the impressive features at the site.
ancient temple which once upon a time

belonged to white men.” This was thus Archaeologists are now able to give
a migrationist view. a coherent picture of the economic
Systematic excavations were and social conditions in the area in the
undertaken by Gertrude Caton- thireenth to fifteenth centuries ce that
Thompson (see p. 34), and she made the great achievement of the
concluded her report in 1931: construction of the monument possible.
“Examination of all the existing evidence, Significant influence—diffusion—from
gathered from every quarter, still can more “advanced” areas is no
produce not one single item that is not Northeast entrance longer part of that picture.
in accordance with the claim of Bantu North
entrance
origin and medieval date.” But despite Passage
this, other archaeologists continued
to offer diffusionist explanations in
speaking of “influences” from “higher Enclosure 1 Enclosure 15
centers of culture.” Portuguese traders Platforms
were one favored source of inspiration.

Enclosure 4
Subsequent research has backed up
the conclusions of Caton-Thompson.
Great Zimbabwe is now seen as the
most notable of a larger class of Monoliths Platform
(restored)
monuments in this area.
West
entrance Enclosure 5 Enclosure 7
Conical
N tower
Enclosure 6
(Right) Site plan: the Elliptical Building, with its

150 ft.
series of enclosed areas, platforms, and the
50 m
conical tower.
Explaining Great Zimbabwe 281

The Processual Approach
The processual approach attempts to isolate and study the different processes
at work within a society, and between societies, placing emphasis on relations
with the environment, on subsistence and the economy, on social relations
within the society, on the impact that the prevailing ideology and belief
system have on these things, and on the effects of the interactions taking
place between the different social units.
It is a characteristic of processual explanations that they have usually
focused on ecological and social factors the operation of which can be
analyzed in some detail. Sometimes a systems model is used, looking at the
interaction of what may be defined as the subsystems of the culture system.
A good early example of a processual explanation, even though today it is
regarded as incomplete, is offered by Lewis Binford’s explanation for the
origins of sedentary society and of a farming economy.
In 1968, Binford published an influential paper, “Post-Pleistocene
Adaptations,” in which he set out to explain the origins of farming, or food
production. Attempts to do this had been made by earlier scholars. But
Binford’s explanation had one important feature that distinguished it from
earlier explanations and made it very much a product of the New Archaeology:
its generality. For he was setting out to explain the origins of farming not just
in the Near East or the Mediterranean—although he focused on these areas—
but also worldwide. He drew attention to global events at the end of the last
Ice Age (i.e. at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, hence the title of his paper).
Binford centered his explanation on demography: he was concerned
with population dynamics within small communities, stressing that once
a formerly mobile group becomes sedentary—ceases to move around—its
population size will increase markedly. For in a settled village the constraints
no longer operate that, in a mobile group, severely limit the number of small
children a mother can rear. There is no longer the difficulty, for instance, of
carrying children from place to place. Crucial to the question was the fact that
in the Near East some communities (of the Natufian culture around 9000 bce)
did indeed become sedentary before they were food-producing. He could see
that, once settled, there would be considerable population pressure, in view
of the greater number of surviving children. This would lead to increasing use
of such locally available plant foods as wild cereals, which had hitherto been
considered marginal and of little value. From the intensive use of cereals, and
the introduction of ways of processing them, would develop the regular cycle
of sowing and harvesting, and thus the course of plant-human involvement
leading to domestication would be well underway.
But why did these pre-agricultural groups become sedentary in the first
place? Binford’s view was that rising sea levels at the end of the Pleistocene
(caused by the melting of polar ice) had two significant effects. First, they

reduced the extent of the coastal plains available to the hunter-gatherers.
And second, the new habitats created by the rise in sea level offered to human
groups much greater access to migratory fish and to migrant fowl. Using these
rich resources, rather as the inhabitants of the Northwest Coast of North
America have done in more recent times, the hunter-gatherer groups found
it possible for the first time to lead a sedentary existence. They were no longer
obliged to move.
In some respects Binford’s explanation is seen today as rather too simple.
Nevertheless, it has many strengths. Although the focus was on the Near
East, the same arguments can equally be applied to other parts of the world.
Binford avoided migration or diffusion, and analyzed the origins of farming
in processual terms.
Marxist Archaeology
Following the upsurge in theoretical discussion that followed the initial
impact of the New Archaeology, there was a reawakening of interest in
applying to archaeology some of the implications of the earlier work of
Karl Marx. Marx was an extremely influential nineteenth-century philosopher
and political economist. Although his work covered a wide range of issues,
he is most famous for his analysis of history in terms of conflicts between
social classes.
The key feature of Marxist archaeology, then, is that change within a past
society was caused mainly by the contradictions that arise between the forces
of production and social organization. Characteristically these contradictions
Karl Marx has influenced the
emerge as a struggle between classes (if this is a society where distinct social
interpretations of many archaeologists, classes have already developed). Emphasis on class struggle and internal
especially concerning how change
occurs in a society.
differences is a feature of most Marxist explanations: this is a view of the
world where change comes about through the resolution of internal dissent.
It may be contrasted with the “functionalist” view favored by the early New
Archaeology, where selective pressures toward greater efficiency are seen
to operate and changes are often viewed as mutually beneficial.
In traditional Marxism the ideology of a society—the whole system
of knowledge and belief—is seen as largely determined by the nature of the
economic base. This point is disputed by the “neo-Marxists” who regard
ideology and economics as interrelated and mutually influential, rather
than one as dominant and the other subordinate.
There are many positive features that Marxist analyses share with
processual archaeology, but, in comparison with the processual studies of
the New Archaeologists, many such Marxist analyses seem rather short on
the handling of concrete archaeological data. The gap between theoretical
archaeology and field archaeology is not always effectively bridged, and the
critics of Marxist archaeology sometimes observe that since Karl Marx laid
The Processual Approach 283

down the basic principles more than a century ago, all that remains for the
Marxist archaeologists to do is to elaborate them: research in the field is
superfluous. Despite these differences, processual archaeology and Marxist
archaeology have much in common.
Evolutionary Archaeology
Evolutionary archaeology explores the notion that the processes responsible
for biological evolution (as set out by Charles Darwin in the nineteenth
century) also drive culture change.
Proponents see the modern mind as the product of biological evolution,
and argue that the only way so complex an entity can have arisen is by natural
selection. In particular they argue that the human mind evolved under the
selective pressures faced by hunter-gatherers during the Pleistocene period,
and that our minds remain adapted to that way of life. Several writers have
followed this lead, seeking to place the evolution of mind in an explicitly
evolutionary framework. These are fascinating insights, but they have not
yet been supported by any neurological analysis of the hardware of the brain
and of its evolution.
Evolutionary archaeologists in the United States advocate the application
of Darwinian evolutionary theory to the archaeological record. They can
justifiably point to longstanding cultural traditions in different parts of
the world that reflect the inheritance of cultural traits from generation to
generation. It could be argued that they have shown how the transmission
of human culture can validly be seen in Darwinian evolutionary terms. It is
less clear, however, that to analyze culture change in those terms offers fresh
insights not already available to archaeologists. Evolutionary archaeology
has not yet produced case studies of culture change that explain its processes
more coherently or persuasively than other approaches: that is the challenge
that it currently faces.
The Form of Explanation: Specific or General?

To understand these debates within archaeology it is useful to consider what
exactly we mean by “explanation.” The different things we try to explain
might require different kinds of explanation.
There are two completely opposite forms of explanation. The first approach
is specific: it seeks to know more and more of the details surrounding an
event. It assumes that if we can establish enough of what led up to the event
we hope to explain, then that event itself will become much clearer for us.
Such explanation has sometimes been called “historical.”
Some historical explanations lay great stress on any insights we can gain
into the ideas of the historical people in question, and for that reason are
sometimes termed idealist. If you want to know why an action was taken it

is necessary to get inside the mind of the decision maker, and thus to know as
many of the surrounding details, and as much about his or her life, as possible.
The second form of explanation, that of the New Archaeology, lays
much more stress on generalization. The early New Archaeologists sought
“regularities,” patterns in the data, and turned to the philosophy of science
(of the time) for help. Unluckily, perhaps, they turned to the German-American
philosopher Carl Hempel, who argued that all explanations should be framed
in terms of natural laws. A lawlike statement is a universal statement, meaning
that in certain circumstances (and other things being equal) X always implies
Y, or that Y varies with X according to a certain definite relationship. Hempel
argued that the events we might be seeking to explain could be accounted for
by bringing together two things: the detailed circumstances leading up to the
event, and the “law” that would allow us to forecast what actually happened.
A few New Archaeologists tried to write archaeology in the form of
universal laws. Most, however, saw that it is very difficult to make universal
laws about human behavior that are not either very trivial, or untrue. Some
archaeologists, such as Kent Flannery, saw that when Hempel’s approach
was applied to archaeology, it produced only “Mickey Mouse laws” of little
conceivable value. Flannery’s favorite example was: “As the population of a site
increases, the number of storage pits will go up.”
One of the positive contributions of the New Archaeology, however, was in
fact to follow the scientific convention of making specific and explicit, as far as
is possible, the assumptions on which an argument rests. It makes very good
sense to formulate a hypothesis, establish by deduction what would follow
from it if it were true, and then to see if these consequences are in fact found
in the archaeological record by testing the hypothesis against fresh data.
Processual archaeologists argued that it is this willingness to test our beliefs
and assumptions against real data that separates a scientific approach from
mere uncontrolled speculation.
Explanation: One Cause or Several?

As soon as we start to address the really big questions in archaeology,
explanation becomes a very complicated matter: many of the big questions
refer not to a single event, but to a class of events.
One of the biggest questions, for example, is the development of
urbanization and the emergence of state societies. This process apparently
happened in different parts of the world independently. Each case was, in
a sense, no doubt unique. But each was also a specific instance of a more
general process. In just the same way, a biologist can discuss (as Darwin did)
the process by which the different species emerged, without denying
the uniqueness of each species, or the uniqueness of each individual within
a species.
Explanation: One Cause or Several? 285

If we focus now on the origins of urbanization and the state as an example,
we shall see that this is a field where many different explanations have been
offered. Broadly speaking, we can distinguish between explanations that
concentrate largely on one cause (monocausal explanations) and those
that consider a number of factors (multivariate explanations).
Monocausal Explanations: The Origins of the State

If we look at different monocausal explanations in turn, we shall find
that some of them are in their way very plausible. Often, however, one
explanation works more effectively than another when applied to a
particular area—to the emergence of the state in Mesopotamia, for instance,
or in Egypt, but not necessarily in Mexico or in the Indus Valley. Each of the
following examples today seems incomplete. Yet each makes a point that
remains valid.
The hydraulic hypoThesis. The historian Karl Wittfogel, writing in the

1950s, explained the origin of the great civilizations in terms of large-scale
irrigation of the alluvial plains of the great rivers. It was, he suggested,
this alone that brought about the fertility and the high yields that led to
considerable density of population in the early civilizations, and hence to
the possibility of urbanism. At the same time, however, irrigation required
effective management—a group of people in authority who would control
and organize the labor needed to dig and maintain irrigation ditches, etc.
So irrigation and “hydraulic organization” had to go together, and from these,
Wittfogel concluded, emerged a system of differentiated leadership, greater
productivity and wealth, and so on.
Wittfogel categorized the system of government characteristic of those
civilizations founded on irrigation agriculture as one of “oriental despotism.”
Among the civilizations to which this line of thinking has been applied are:
• Mesopotamia: the Sumerian civilization from c. 3000 bce onward and

its successors
• Ancient Egypt: the Valley of the Nile from c. 3000 onward bce
• India/Pakistan: the Indus Valley civilization from c. 2500 onward bce
• China: the Shang civilization, c. 1500 bce, and its successors
inTernal conflicT. In the late 1960s the Russian historian Igor

Diakonoff developed a different explanation for state origins. In his model,
the state is seen as an organization that imposes order on class conflict,
which itself arises from increased wealth. Internal differentiation within
the society is here seen as a major causative element, from which other
consequences follow.

Warfare. Warfare between adjacent groups is increasingly seen as an
agent of change. While in some cases there were cyclical conflicts with little
long-term effect, in others the result was conquest and the formation of
larger, inclusive state societies. Kent Flannery has emphasized the historically
documented role of individual military leaders in the initial formation of state
societies (an example of the “agency” of the individual, see pp. 294–95).
populaTion GroWTh. An explanation much favored by many

archaeologists focuses on the question of population growth. The eighteenth-
century English scholar Thomas Malthus argued that human population
tends to grow to the limit permitted by the food supply. When the limit or
“carrying capacity” is reached, further population increase leads to food
shortage, and this in turn leads to an increased death rate and lower fertility
(and in some cases to armed conflict). That sets a firm ceiling on population.
population food increased death rate

growth shortage and lower fertility
Ester Boserup, in her influential book The Conditions of Agricultural Growth (1965),
effectively reversed the position of Malthus. He had viewed food supply as
essentially limited. She argued that agriculture will intensify—farmers will
produce more food from the same area of land—if population increases.
In other words, by shortening the periods during which land is left to lie
fallow, or by introducing the plow, or irrigation, farmers can increase their
productivity. Population growth can then be sustained to new levels.
population introduction increase in

growth of new farming agricultural
methods production
So increase of population leads to intensification of agriculture, and to the

need for greater administrative efficiencies and economies of scale, including
the development of craft specialization. People work harder because they have
to, and the society is more productive. There are larger units of population,
and consequent changes in the settlement pattern. As numbers increase, any
decision-making machinery will need to develop a hierarchy. Centralization
ensues, and a centralized state is the logical outcome.
environmenTal circumscripTion. A different approach, although one

that uses some of the variables already indicated, is offered by Robert Carneiro.
Taking as his example the formation of state society in Peru, he developed an
explanation that stressed the constraints imposed by the environment, and
Explanation: One Cause or Several? 287

on the role of warfare (environmental circumscription). Population increase is
an important component of his model, but it is put together in a different way,
and the development of strong leadership in time of war is a key factor.
exTernal Trade. The importance of trading links with communities

outside the homeland area has been stressed by several archaeologists
seeking explanations for the formation of the state. One of the most elaborate
of these is the model put forward by the American archaeologist William
Rathje for the emergence of state societies in the Maya lowlands. He argued
that in lowland areas lacking basic raw materials there will be pressure for
the development of more integrated and highly organized communities able
to ensure the regular supply of those materials. He used this hypothesis to
explain the rise of the Classic Maya civilization in the lowland rainforest.
Multivariate Explanations: The Classic Maya Collapse

All the preceding explanations for the origins of the state primarily emphasize
one chief variable, a principal strand in the explanation, even though there
are several strands involved. In reality, when there are so many factors at
work, there is something rather too simplified about such monocausal
explanations. It is necessary somehow to be able to deal with several factors
at once: that is why such explanations are termed multivariate. Of course, none
of the explanations summarized above is so naive as to be truly monocausal:
each involves a number of factors. But these factors are not systematically
integrated. Several scholars have therefore sought ways of coping with a large
number of variables that simultaneously vary.
One example of a multivariate explanation has been developed for the
collapse of Classic Maya society in the ninth century ce (see box overleaf).
Postprocessual or Interpretive Explanation

After the mid-1970s, the early New Archaeology (or functional-processual
archaeology) came under criticism from several quarters. For example, early
on it was criticized by Bruce Trigger in his book Time and Traditions (1978),
who found the approach, which sought to formulate explanatory laws, too
constraining. He preferred the broadly descriptive method of the traditional
historian. It was also criticized by Kent Flannery, who was scornful of the trivial
nature of some of the so-called laws proposed and felt that more attention
should be focused on the ideological and symbolic aspects of societies. Ian
Hodder, likewise, felt that archaeology’s closest links were with history, and
wanted to see the role of the individual in history more fully recognized.
Hodder also very validly stressed what he called “the active role of material
culture,” emphasizing that the artifacts and the material world we construct
are not simply reflections of our social reality that become embodied in the

material record. On the contrary, material culture and actual objects are a large
part of what makes society work: wealth, for instance, is what spurs many to
work in a modern society. Hodder goes on to assert that material culture is
“meaningfully constituted,” or in other words that it is the result of deliberate
actions by individuals whose thoughts and actions should not be overlooked.
Discussions of these issues led some archaeologists in Britain and in
the United States to create the postprocessual archaeology of the 1990s,
overcoming some of what they saw as the limitations of processual
archaeology (and indeed much of traditional Marxist archaeology also).
These debates are now largely over, but the result is a series of interesting
approaches that together will shape the “interpretive archaeologies” of the
early twenty-first century, operating alongside continuing processual or
cognitive-processual archaeology.
Structuralist Approaches
Several archaeologists have been influenced by the structuralist ideas of the
French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, and by the advances in linguistics
of the American Noam Chomsky. Structuralist archaeologists stress that
human actions are guided by beliefs and symbolic concepts, and that the
proper object of study is the structures of thought—the ideas—in the minds
of human actors who made the artifacts and created the archaeological
record. These archaeologists argue that there are recurrent patterns in human
thought in different cultures, many of which can be seen in such polar
opposites as: cooked/raw; left/right; dirty/clean; man/woman, etc. Moreover,
they argue that thought categories seen in one sphere of life will be seen
also in other spheres, so that, for example, a preoccupation with boundaries
in the field of social relations is likely to be detectable in other areas, such
as “boundaries” visible in pottery decoration.
Critical Theory
Critical Theory is the term given to the approach developed by the so-called
“Frankfurt School” of German social thinkers, which came to prominence
in the 1970s. This stresses that any claims to seek “objective” knowledge are
illusory. By their interpretive approach these scholars seek a more enlightened
view, which will break out of the limitations of existing systems of thought.
They see researchers (including archaeologists) who claim to be dealing in
a scientific way with social matters as tacitly supporting the “ideology of
control” by which domination is exercised in modern society.
This overtly political critique has serious implications for archaeology.
For the philosophers of this school stress that there is no such thing as an
objective fact. Facts only have meaning in relation to a view of the world,
and in relation to theory. Followers of this school are critical of the criterion
Postprocessual or Interpretive Explanation 289

The Classic Chichen Itza •
Maya Collapse Southern

•Tikal
• Copan
Maya lowlands
Contrary to widespread belief, Maya Collapse in the Southern Lowlands to erect monuments for some time,
civilization did not suffer a single, The final collapse in the southern the last in about 909 ce. Royal building
sudden, and total collapse. When the lowlands has long been the most projects ceased—sometimes very
Spaniards reached northern Yucatan in celebrated and difficult to explain suddenly—and no more royal burials
the early sixteenth century they found because of its scale and because were interred. Although some polities
dense populations of Maya-speaking there was no recovery in that region. and capitals collapsed abruptly and
people living in hundreds of thriving In 750 ce this vast area supported a with clear signs of violence, others
local polities. population of at least several million were abandoned more gradually
Archaeologists now know that cycles people divided among forty to fifty (and apparently peacefully). If our
of collapse and recovery were common major kingdoms. But eight centuries perspective is the whole southern
in Maya society for 1500 years. The later, when Europeans arrived, it was lowlands, the disintegration of
earliest “big” collapse occurred in the almost deserted. Explorers in the centralized political institutions thus
Mirador Basin of northern Guatemala, nineteenth century told of imposing and occurred over a period of roughly 150
where huge centers thrived in the overgrown ruins, creating romanticized years (although some imposing centers
Middle and Late Preclassic. By impressions of a catastrophic collapse. did somehow survive the troubles).
around 150 ce this region was largely By the beginning of the twentieth What happened to the populations
abandoned (and never substantially century scholars could decipher dates associated with the defunct Classic
recovered) and there is evidence that carved on Maya monuments. These capitals is a more controversial
ecosystems there and elsewhere were suggested a steady expansion of, and issue. Many regions do appear to
increasingly degraded. vigor in, Maya civilization beginning have suffered abrupt demographic
The Classic period (250–900 ce) in the third century ce, peak activity declines, but others did not. At Copan,
southern Maya lowlands also saw around 790 ce, and then a precipitous for example, elite activity continued
many local collapses, as Maya decline in monument building over in some sub-royal palace compounds
capitals and their dynastic the next 120 years, which signaled until about 1000 ce, and the overall
lines waxed and waned, the collapse of centralized rulership. population dwindled away over some
as well as a final Although only elite activity was directly four centuries.
collapse in the reflected in these data, in the absence
tenth century. of other information it was presumed Explaining the Collapse
that each Classic political system and Most archaeologists agree that
population suffered a catastrophic no single cause can explain what
collapse in one or two generations. happened. Instead, a set of interlocked
We now know that the collapse stresses, such as overpopulation,
process was much more complicated deterioration of the agricultural
and protracted. Most scholars agree landscape, famine, disease, warfare,
that the decline began at least as early internal social unrest, climate change,
as 760 ce, when centers in the west and ideological fatigue increasingly
of the region were abandoned during afflicted the Late Classic Maya (see
well-documented cycles of destructive diagram opposite). Some causes were
warfare. Centers elsewhere continued certainly more important than others.
Most recently, paleoclimatologists
have postulated a series of droughts
Temple I at Tikal, Guatemala, built around
740–750 ce. Tikal was one of the great Maya
in the interval between 770 and
centers, but was almost completely deserted 1100 ce. Some believe this was the
after 950 ce. single most important trigger of the

Ineffective ritual Ideological
regulation resistance
Ambitions of
divine rulers Increased external
warfare
Environmental Famine, lowered

Population growth Increased demand Enlarged zones
degradation, lowered reproductive Decline of General political
and increased for food and of cultivation, more
agrarian production fertility, increased royal institutions decline
scale of kingdoms other products intense land use
efficiency physiological stress
Political defection
Initial beneficial Internal political and
and population
agricultural social disruption
decline
conditions
Demographic decline
Inappropriate elite
and abandonment of
economic meddling
centers and regions
Increased
vulnerability to
droughts, storms, etc.
collapse, affecting food production in an central institution of Maya political life, The interactions that may have helped trigger the
increasingly damaged and vulnerable stressed the supernatural potency of Classic Maya collapse.
landscape. This stress, however, was rulers. Kings projected themselves as
probably exacerbated by social and the great guarantors of prosperity and deliver on these promises during the
ideological components. Kingship, the stability, and manifestly were unable to critical eighth and ninth centuries.
of testing as used by processual archaeologists, seeing this procedure as

merely the importing into archaeology and history of “positivistic” approaches
from the sciences. They call into question most of the procedures of reasoning
by which archaeology has operated.
The processualists’ response to these ideas is to point out that to follow
them seems to imply that one person’s view of the past is as good as another’s
(so-called “relativism”), without any hope of choosing systematically between
them. This would open the way to the “fringe” or “alternative” archaeologies
discussed in Chapter 11, where explanations can be offered in terms of flying
saucers, or extraterrestrial forces, or any other fantasy. It is not entirely clear
how the Critical Theorists can answer this criticism.
Neo-Marxist Thought
Neo-Marxist thought places a much greater emphasis on the significance of
ideology in shaping change in societies than does traditional Marxism (which
treats ideology as subordinate to economy). One example of a neo-Marxist
approach is offered by the work of Mark Leone at Annapolis in Maryland,
as part of a research project concerned with establishing a deeper historical
identity for the area. His example is the eighteenth-century garden of William
Postprocessual or Interpretive Explanation 291

Paca, a wealthy landowner: the garden has been studied archaeologically
and has now been reconstructed.
Leone examined the Annapolis garden in detail, and emphasized
the contradiction represented between a slave-owning society and one
proclaiming independence in order to promote individual liberty, a
contradiction seen also in Paca’s life. “To mask this contradiction,” Leone
writes, “his position of power was placed in law and in nature. This was done
both in practicing law and in gardening.”
This neo-Marxist outlook has its echo in the emerging local archaeologies
of some countries in the developing world, where there is an understandable
desire to construct a history (and an archaeology) that lays stress on the local
population and its achievements before the colonial era (see Chapter 11).
During the 1980s and 1990s a new perspective emerged, which transcends
some of the limitations of the functional-processual archaeology of the 1970s.
This new synthesis, known as cognitive archaeology (or “cognitive-processual”
archaeology), while willingly learning from any suitable developments
in postprocessual archaeology, remains in the mainstream of processual
archaeology. It still wishes to explain rather than merely describe. It also
still emphasizes the role of generalization within its theoretical structure,
and stresses the importance not only of formulating hypotheses but also
of testing them against the data. It rejects the total relativism that seems
to be the end point of Critical Theory, and it is suspicious of structuralist
(and other) archaeologists who claim privileged insight into “meaning”
in ancient societies, or proclaim “universal principles of meaning.”
Cognitive-processual archaeology differs from its functional-processual
predecessor in several ways:
• It seeks to incorporate information about the cognitive and symbolic

aspects of early societies into its formulations (see below, pp. 293–94).
• It recognizes that ideology is an active force within societies and must
be given a role in many explanations, as neo-Marxist archaeologists have
argued, and that ideology acts on the minds of individuals.
• Material culture is seen as an active factor in constituting the world
in which we live. Individuals and societies construct their own social
reality, and material culture has an integral place within that
construction, as effectively argued by Ian Hodder and his colleagues.
• The role of internal conflict within societies is a matter to be more fully
considered, as Marxist archaeologists have always emphasized.
• The rather limited view of historical explanation being entirely related
to the human individual should be revised.

• It can take account of the creative role of the individual without relying
Key Concepts on intuition or becoming extremely subjective.
Cognitive Archaeology • “Facts” can no longer be viewed as having an objective existence
independent of theory.
Cognitive archaeology is the
study of the ways of thought
This last point needs further discussion. Philosophers of science have long
and structures of belief of past
societies on the basis of their
contrasted two approaches to the evaluation of the truth of a statement. One
material remains evaluates the statement by comparing it with relevant facts, to which, if true,
it should correspond. The other evaluates the statement by judging whether
It attempts to use the more or not it is consistent with the other statements that we believe to be true
rigorous and explicit methods
within our framework of beliefs. Although it might be expected that the
of the processual approach
scientist would follow the first of these two procedures, in practice any
It applies rigorous methods to assessment is based on a combination of the two. For it is accepted that facts
symbolic and ideological issues, have to be based on observations, and observations themselves cannot be
many of which were first addressed made without using some framework of inference, which itself depends on
by postprocessual or interpretive
theories about the world. It is more appropriate to think of facts modifying
approaches (e.g. questions of
identity, gender, and religious
theory, yet of theory being used in the determination of facts.
belief in the past) Cognitive-processual archaeologists, like their functional-processual
predecessors, believe that theories must be tested against facts. They reject
It shows willingness to address the relativism of the Critical Theory and postprocessual archaeology of the
the symbolizing and reasoning
1990s. They do, however, accept that the relationship between fact and
abilities of hominins before
the emergence of Homo
theory is more complicated than some philosophers of science forty years
sapiens, sometimes within ago recognized.
an evolutionary framework
Symbol and Interaction
It accepts the postprocessual
The point has already been made that the early New Archaeology aspired
emphasis on the active role of
material culture
to investigate social structures. But it was slow to explore symbolic
aspects of culture, which is why cognitive-processual archaeology is a
It recognizes that cognitive recent development.
developments are also The role of religious ritual within society has been investigated in a new
social developments
way over the past thirty years by the cultural anthropologist Roy Rappaport.
Instead of seeking to immerse himself in the agricultural society in New
Guinea under study, becoming totally familiar with the meanings of its
symbolic forms, he followed instead a strategy of distancing himself—of
looking at the society from the outside, at what it actually does (not what
it says it does) in its ritual behavior. This position is a convenient one for the
archaeologist who is always outside the society under study, and unable to
discuss issues of meaning with its participants. Rappaport has studied the
way ritual is used within society and his focus is on the functioning of
symbols rather than on their original meaning.
His work influenced Kent Flannery, one of the few of the original generation
of New Archaeologists to concern himself in detail with symbolic questions.

The book written by Joyce Marcus and Kent Flannery, Zapotec Civilization (1996),
is one of those rare archaeological studies where symbolic and cognitive
questions are integrated with subsistence, economic, and social ones to form
an integrated view of society.
Quite clearly religion and such other ideologies as modern communism
have brought about great changes, not just in the way societies think but
also in the way they act and behave—and this will leave its mark in the
archaeological record. The whole field of official symbolism, and of religious
symbolism within it, is now the focus of archaeological research in several
parts of the world.
Postprocessual archaeology has not shown itself adept at explaining
classes of events or general processes, since the focus in postprocessual
thought is upon the specific conditions of the context in question, and the
validity of wider or cross-cultural generalizations is not accepted. Cognitive-
processual archaeology on the other hand is very willing to generalize,
and indeed to integrate the individual into the analysis as an active agent.
Two studies in the mainstream processual tradition exemplify well the
emphasis that is now placed upon the cognitive dimension. Timothy Earle
in How Chiefs Come to Power (1997) devotes successive chapters to economic
power, military power, and ideology as a source of power, utilizing three
widely separated case studies situated in Denmark, Hawaii, and the Andes.
And, likewise treating the subject within a comparative perspective,
Richard Blanton has examined the sources of power in early states, contrasting
the “cognitive-symbolic base of power” with what he terms the “objective
base of power.” The study fully integrates the cognitive dimension into the
analysis, alongside economic issues. In such works the limitations of the
earlier processual archaeology have been transcended and the roots of
change are investigated with full weight being given to the cognitive and
the symbolic dimensions.
Agency and Material Engagement

In the past decade or so archaeologists working in different conceptual
traditions have sought in various ways to integrate the cognitive and symbolic
on the one hand with the practical and productive on the other. One aim
is to reconcile the short-term intentions or agency of the individual with
the long-term and often unintended consequences of cumulative actions.
Archaeologists who take this approach hope to combine a broad outline
of processes of change with the finer texture of specific culture histories.
Agency
The concept of agency has been introduced to permit discussion of the role
of the individual in promoting change, but the scope of the term is not always

clear, particularly when used, as by some anthropologists, as a quality that
can be assigned to artifacts as well as to people. The various discussions of
agency attempt to illuminate the role of the individual, but it is very difficult
to determine clearly how the actions of one individual had a wider and longer-
term impact.
Material Engagement
A related notion, that change arises from conscious and often purposeful
human activities, is associated with the recently developed concepts of
material engagement or materialization. These seek to overcome the duality
in discussions of human affairs between the practical and the cognitive,
the material and the conceptual. Indeed most innovations and long-term
changes in human societies, even technical ones, have a symbolic dimension
as well as a material one, involving what the philosopher John Searle terms
“institutional facts,” which are themselves social creations.
The material engagement approach is one of several that gives greater
attention to things and the material properties of things, and the different
interactions between humans and the material world that come about
through developing technologies and changing social and economic relations.
There is still a tension also between those using archaeology to write culture
history (usually of a single society) and those using evolutionary thinking to
analyze long-term change. Each perspective has clear coherence and validity,
but the two rarely seem to mesh together.
In these different approaches to the explanation of change there is
some commonality of aspiration and this may yet lead to interesting new
developments. But there is no single theoretical perspective that commands
universal or even widespread respect.
Study Questions
1 Why is archaeology unique among the human sciences?

2 What are the key differences between processual and postprocessual
archaeology?
3 What is Marxist archaeology and how is it different from the New
Archaeology?
4 What are some monocausal explanations for the origins of the state?
5 What is Critical Theory and what are its implications for archaeology?
6 Is there a correct way to explain change in the past?
Agency and Material Engagement 295

Summary
iT is difficulT to explain why things happened in the past, yet this must be one
of the key tasks of archaeology.
explanaTions in Terms of the migrations of people or using the rather vague

idea of the “diffusion” of culture used to be very popular: today they are less frequent.
The processual approach has consistently tried to see broader patterns and
general explanations. In general, multivariate (multiple-factor) explanations work
better than monocausal (single-factor) explanations for such complex outcomes
as the origins of state societies.
inTerpreTive explanaTions, on the other hand, usually emphasize the

specific context. Both approaches converge toward a cognitive archaeology
that acknowledges the role of human intelligence, creativity, and initiative.
yeT There remain several different approaches to the difficult task of

explanation. Some scholars advocate the notion of human agency, others analyze
the knowledgeable engagement between humans and the material world.
This remains an underdeveloped area of archaeological theory.
Further Reading
The broad topics covered in this chapter Malafouris, L. 2013. How Things
are explored in: Shape the Mind: A Theory of
Material Engagement. MIT Press:
DeMarrais, E., Gosden, C., & Renfrew, Cambridge, MA.
C. (eds). 2004. Rethinking Materiality: Reich, D. 2018. Who We Are and
The Engagement of Mind with How We Got Here: Ancient DNA
the Material World. McDonald and the New Science of the
Institute: Cambridge. Human Past. Pantheon Books:
Gamble, C. 2007. Origins and New York.
Revolutions: Human Identity in Renfrew, C. 2009. Prehistory: The
Earliest Prehistory. Cambridge Making of the Human Mind. Modern
University Press: Cambridge Library: New York.
& New York. Shennan, S. 2002. Genes, Memes and
Haak W. et al. 2015. “Massive migration Human History. Thames & Hudson:
from the steppe was a source for London & New York.
Indo-European languages in Europe.” Webster, D. L. 2002. The Fall of the
Nature 522, 207–11. Ancient Maya. Thames & Hudson:
Hodder, I. 2004. Reading the Past (3rd London & New York.
ed.). Cambridge University Press:
Cambridge & New York. [See p. 345 for a list of useful websites]

11 Whose Past?
Archaeology and the Public
The Meaning of the Past:

The Archaeology of Identity 298
Nationalism and Its Symbols 299
Archaeology and Ideology 300
Archaeological Ethics 301
Popular Archaeology vs
Pseudoarchaeology 302
Who Owns the Past? 305

Museums and the Return of Cultural
Property 305
Excavating Burials: Should We Disturb
the Dead? 306
The Responsibility of Collectors

and Museums 309
❑ Destruction and Response: Mimbres 310
Study Questions 314

Summary 315
Further Reading 315
This book is concerned with the way that archaeologists investigate the
past, with the questions we can ask, and our means of answering them. But
the time has come to address much wider questions: Why, beyond reasons
of scientific curiosity, do we want to know about the past? What does the past
mean to us? What does it mean to others with different viewpoints? Whose
past is it anyway?
These issues lead us to questions of responsibility, public as well as private.
For surely a national monument, such as the Parthenon in Athens, means
something special to the modern descendants of its builders. But does it not
also mean something to all humankind? If so, should it not be protected from
destruction, in the same way as endangered plant and animal species? If the
looting of ancient sites is to be deplored, should it not be stopped, even if the
sites are on privately owned land? Who owns, or should own, the past?
These very soon become ethical questions—of right and wrong, of
appropriate action and reprehensible action. The archaeologist has a special
responsibility because excavation itself entails destruction. Future workers’
understanding of a site can never be much more than our own, because
we will have destroyed the evidence and recorded only those parts of it we
considered important and had the energy to publish properly.
The past is big business—in tourism and in the auction rooms. But by their
numbers tourists threaten the sites they seek to enjoy; and the plunder of
looters and illegal excavators finds its way into private collections and public
museums. The past is politically highly charged, ideologically powerful,
and significant. And the past, as we shall see in the next chapter, is subject
to increasing destruction through unprecedented commercial, industrial, and
agricultural exploitation of the Earth’s surface, and through damage in war.
The Meaning of the Past: The Archaeology of Identity

When we ask what the past means, we are asking what the past means for us,
for it means different things to different people. An Australian Aborigine, for
298 11 • Whose Past?

example, may attach a very different significance to fossil human remains from
such an early site as Lake Mungo, or to paintings in the Kakadu National Park,
than a white Australian. Different communities have very different conceptions
about the past that often draw on sources well beyond archaeology.
At this point we go beyond the question of what actually happened in
the past, and of the explanation of why it happened, to issues of meaning,
significance, and interpretation. And it is at this point, therefore, that many
of the concerns that have become explicit in archaeology over the past
couple of decades become entirely relevant. How we interpret the past,
how we present it (for instance in museum displays), and what lessons
we choose to draw from it are to a considerable extent matters for subjective
decision, often involving ideological and political issues.
For in a very broad sense the past is where we came from. Individually
we each have our personal, genealogical past: our parents, grandparents,
and earlier kinsfolk from whom we are descended. Increasingly in the Western
world there is an interest in this personal past, reflected in the enthusiasm for
Either Philip II of Macedon, father of
family trees and for “roots” generally. Our personal identity, and generally our
Alexander the Great, or Philip III, Alexander’s name, are in part defined for us in the relatively recent past, even though those
half-brother, was buried in a gold casket
decorated with an impressive star (bottom).
elements with which we choose to identify are largely a matter of personal
This was adopted as the national symbol choice. Nor is this inheritance purely a spiritual one. Most land tenure in the
of the Former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia, as seen on one of their
world is determined by inheritance, and much other wealth is inherited: the
stamps (top). material world in this sense comes to us from the past, and is certainly, when
the time comes, relinquished by us to the future.
Nationalism and Its Symbols

Collectively our cultural inheritance is rooted in a deeper past: the origins of
our language, our faith, and our customs. Increasingly archaeology plays an
important role in the definition of national identity. This is particularly the
case for those nations that do not have a very long written history, though
many consider oral histories of equal value to written ones. The national
emblems of many recently emerged nations are taken from artifacts
seen as typical of some special and early local golden age: even
the name of the state of Zimbabwe comes from the name of an
archaeological site.
Yet sometimes the use of archaeology and of images recovered
from the past to focus and enhance national identity can lead to
conflict. In the 1990s a major crisis related to the name and national
emblems adopted by the then newly independent Former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia. For in Greece, immediately to the south,
the name Macedon refers not only to contemporaneous provinces
within Greece, but also to the ancient kingdom of that famous
Greek leader, Alexander the Great. The affront that the name
The Meaning of the Past: The Archaeology of Identity 299

caused in Greece was compounded by the FYR Macedonia’s use of a star as a
national symbol, using the image on a gold casket found among the splendid
objects in a tomb from the fourth century bce at Vergina, a tomb located well
within modern Greek territory, thought to have belonged either to Philip II
of Macedon, the father of Alexander, or to Philip III, Alexander’s brother.
Territorial claims can sometimes be based on contentious histories, and some
Greeks thought that the FYR Macedonia was seeking not only to appropriate
the glorious history of Macedonia but perhaps also to incorporate Greece’s
second city, Thessaloniki, within its territorial boundaries. Riots ensued,
based, however, more on inflamed ethnic feelings than upon political reality.
Archaeology and Ideology

The legacy of the past goes beyond sentiments of nationalism and ethnicity.
Sectarian sentiments often find expression in major monuments, and many
Christian churches were built on the site of deliberately destroyed “pagan”
temples. In just a few cases they actually utilized such temples—the Parthenon
in Athens is one example—and one of the best-preserved Greek temples is
now the cathedral in Syracuse in Sicily.
Religious extremism is responsible for many acts of destruction. The
senseless demolition in March 2001 by the Taliban of the two giant Buddhas
carved into the sandstone cliffs at Bamiyan, in the Hindu Kush, perhaps in the
third century ce, shocked the world. The only motivation seems to have been
that these were religious images not in accordance with the faith of the Taliban.
Despite a delegation from the Organization of the Islamic Conference, at
which fifty-five Islamic nations were represented, the destruction went ahead.
Standing 53 and 36 m (174 and 118 ft.) high, these were the tallest standing
Buddhas in the world; explosive charges destroyed them almost totally.
With a video released in February 2015 the regime of the so-called Islamic
State (IS) in Iraq and the Levant announced the most conspicuous acts of
fanatical destruction in recent years. These included the use of a power drill
to erase the face of a well-preserved, man-faced winged bull at the Nergal Gate
at Nineveh near Mosul in northern Iraq, dating to Neo-Assyrian times, from
the seventh century bce. The video also showed the deliberate destruction in
the Mosul Museum of life-size statues of rulers from the caravan city of Hatra
in Iraq’s western desert, dating from Parthian times in the second and third
The larger of the colossal Buddhas of centuries ce. Ironically these are among the first Arab rulers in recorded history
Bamiyan (top), carved from the
cliff face in perhaps the third century ce,
and Hatra is the best-preserved Arab site from the pre-Islamic era. Or rather
and now destroyed (above). it was the best preserved, since there are reports of systematic destruction
at the site by IS forces. Similar destruction is also documented at numerous
other sites, most notably at the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria. From May to
September 2015, IS demolished statues, temples, tower tombs, and the Roman
Arch of Triumph (see p. 100).

The Temple of Bel at Palmyra, Syria, before Archaeological Ethics
and after being blown up by IS forces. This
substantial building, completed in 32 ce,
Ethics is the science of morals—i.e. what it is right or wrong—and increasingly
was almost entirely destroyed—only its most branches of archaeology are seen to have an ethical dimension. Precisely
entrance arch remains. Syrian forces retook
Palmyra in March 2017, and while there
because archaeology relates to identity (as reviewed in the last section), and
are various plans to restore the site, clearly to the existence of communities, nations, and indeed humankind itself, it
much has been lost forever.
touches upon urgent practical problems of an ethical nature. These are often
difficult problems because they deal in conflicting principles.
The Latin author Terence is quoted as saying: “Homo sum: humani nihil
a me alienum puto”—“I am a human being, so consider nothing human
alien to me.” Such thinking is central to the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. Many anthropologists feel that “the proper study of (hu)mankind is
(hu)man(ity),” to update the seventeenth-century English poet Alexander
Pope. The implication is that the entire field of human experience should
be our study. Such sentiments encourage the study of fossil hominins, for
instance, and clearly make the study of Australian aboriginal remains (see
pp. 308–9) or those of Kennewick Man (see p. 308) a necessary part of the
work of the biological anthropologist. So there is one principle. But, on
the other hand, it is usual to have a decent respect for the earthly remains
of our own relatives and ancestors. In many tribal societies such respect
imposes obligations, which often find recognition in the law, for instance
in the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA:
see pp. 307–8). This then is a second principle, which has led to the reburial
(and consequent destruction) of ancient human remains whose further
Archaeological Ethics 301

study could have been of benefit to science. Which of the two principles
is right? That is what one may term an ethical dilemma. It is one that is
difficult to resolve, and that underlies several of the sections in this
chapter and the next.
The right to property is another such principle. But the legitimate rights
of the individual property owner (including the collector) can come into
conflict with the very evident rights of wider communities. So it is that
the commercial property developer can disagree with the conservationist.
The ethical tensions between conservation and development are dealt with
in the next chapter. Similar difficulties arise when the purchasing power of
the private collector of antiquities leads to the destruction of archaeological
sites through illicit excavation (looting). Increasingly the importance of
material culture as something with significant social meaning is appreciated
in our society. There are problems here that will not go away, because they
are the product of the conflict of principles. That is why archaeological ethics
is now a growth subject.
Popular Archaeology vs Pseudoarchaeology

Stonehenge has generated innumerable
The purpose of archaeology is to learn more about the past, and archaeologists
theories about its origins and meaning. believe that it is important that everyone should have some knowledge of
Several groups, including Druids and
New Agers, claim it as a monument central
the human past—of where we have come from, and how we have come to be
to their beliefs. where we are. Archaeology is not just for archaeologists. For that reason it is
crucially important that we communicate effectively with the wider public.
But there are several ways in which this important mission can be subverted.
The first is the development of pseudoarchaeology, often for commercial
purposes—that is to say the formulation of extravagant but ill-founded
stories about the past. Sometimes those telling these stories may actually
believe them, but often, as with Dan Brown’s popular novel The Da Vinci Code
(2003), it is suspected that the primary motive of the author is to make money.
Archaeology can be subverted, also, when people actually manufacture false
evidence, and perpetrate archaeological fraud.
ArchAeology At the Fringe. In the later years of the twentieth century

“other” archaeologies grew up at the fringe of the discipline, offering
alternative interpretations of the past. To the scientist these seem fanciful
and extravagant—manifestations of a postmodern age in which horoscopes
are widely read, New Age prophets preach alternative lifestyles, and when
many members of the public are willing to believe that “corn circles” and
megalithic monuments are the work of aliens. Many archaeologists label
such populist approaches as “pseudoarchaeology,” and place them on
a par with such archaeological frauds as Piltdown Man, where deliberate
deception can be demonstrated or inferred.

But how does an archaeologist persuade the self-styled Druids who
perform their rituals at Stonehenge at the summer solstice that their
beliefs are not supported by archaeological evidence? This brings us back
to the central question of this chapter: “Whose Past?” It is not clear that we
should question the reality of the Dreamtime of the Australian Aborigines,
even if aspects of their belief effectively clash with current scientific
interpretations. Where do we distinguish between respect for deeply held
beliefs and the role of the archaeologist to inform the public and to dismiss
credulous nonsense?
One of the most popular and durable myths concerns a “lost Atlantis,”
a story narrated by the Greek philosopher Plato in the fifth century bce,
and attributed by him to the Greek sage Solon, who had visited Egypt and
consulted with priests, the heirs to a long religious and historical tradition.
They told him of a legend of the lost continent beyond the Pillars of Hercules
(the modern Straits of Gibraltar), hence in the Atlantic Ocean, with its
advanced civilization, which vanished centuries earlier “in a night and a day.”
In 1882 Ignatius Donnelly published Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, elaborating
this legend. His work was one of the first to seek a simple explanation of all
ancient civilizations of the world by a single marvellous means. Such theories
often share characteristics:
1 They celebrate a remarkable lost world, the people of which possessed

many skills surpassing those of the present.
2 They account for most of the early accomplishments of prehistoric and
early state societies with a single explanation: all were the work of the
skilled inhabitants of that lost world.
3 That world vanished in a catastrophe of cosmic proportions.
4 Nothing of that original homeland is available for scientific examination,
nor are any artifacts surviving.
The basic structure of Donnelly’s argument was repeated with variants by

Immanuel Velikovsky (meteors and astronomical events) and recently by
Graham Hancock (who sites his lost continent in Antarctica). A popular
alternative, elaborated with great financial profit by Erich von Däniken, is
that the source of progress is outer space, and that the advances of early
civilizations are the work of aliens visiting Earth. Ultimately, however, all such
theories trivialize the much more remarkable story that archaeology reveals—
the history of humankind.
FrAud in ArchAeology. Fraud in archaeology is nothing new and takes

many forms—from the manipulation of evidence by Heinrich Schliemann
to such infamous cases of fakery as Britain’s Piltdown Man. It has been
Popular Archaeology vs Pseudoarchaeology 303

suggested that more than 1200 fake antiquities are displayed in some of the
world’s leading museums. A particularly serious example came to light as
recently as 2000, when a leading Japanese archaeologist admitted planting
artifacts at excavations. Shinichi Fujimura—nicknamed “God’s hands” for his
uncanny ability to uncover ancient objects—had been videotaped burying
his “discoveries” before digging them up again as new finds. He admitted
having buried dozens of artifacts in secret, claiming that it was the pressure
of having to discover older sites that forced him to fake them by using artifacts
from his own collections.
Of 65 pieces unearthed at the Kamitakamori site north of Tokyo, Fujimura
admitted to having faked 61, together with all 29 pieces found in 2000 at the
Soshinfudozaka site in northern Japan. He later admitted having tampered
with evidence at 42 sites; but in 2004 the Japanese Archaeological Association
declared that all of the 168 sites he dug had been faked. Japanese archaeological
authorities are understandably worried about the potential impact on evidence
A cluster of hand-axes at Kamitakamori for the early Paleolithic period in Japan unearthed since the mid-1970s.
faked by Japanese archaeologist Shinichi
Fujimura.
It seems that this phenomenon may currently be on the rise. Some of this
can be blamed on the increased “mediatization” of the field, where, as in Japan,
it can be important to generate publicity to further one’s career, and scientific
publication often takes a back seat to press conferences where the latest finds
are trumpeted. Spectacular discoveries are now sometimes seen as more
important than scholarly debate or critical review. Nevertheless, the actual
fabrication or planting of fake objects is an extreme form of fraud. Japanese
archaeologists are worried that there may be other fraudulent artifacts, yet to
be unearthed, a situation that has been likened to “archaeological landmines,”
ready to wreak havoc on future generations of scholars.
the Wider Audience. Although the immediate aim of most research is

to answer specific questions, the fundamental purpose of archaeology must
be to provide people with a better understanding of the human past. Skillful
popularization—using site and museum exhibits, books, television, and
increasingly the Internet—is therefore required, but not all archaeologists
are prepared to devote time to it, and few are capable of doing it well.
Excavators often regard members of the public as a hindrance to work
on-site. More enlightened archaeologists, however, realize the financial
and other support to be gained from encouraging public interest, and they
organize information sheets, open days, and on long-term projects even fee-
paying daily tours, as at the Bronze Age site of Flag Fen in eastern England.
In Japan, on-the-spot presentations of excavation results are given as soon as
a dig is completed. Details are released to the press the previous day, so that
the public can obtain information from the morning edition of the local paper
before coming to the site itself.

(Below) Part of the “Elgin Marbles” in the Clearly, there is an avid popular appetite for archaeology. In a sense, the past
British Museum: a horseman from the frieze
of the Parthenon in Athens, c. 440 bce.
has been a form of entertainment since the early digging of burial mounds
and the public unwrapping of mummies in the nineteenth century. The
(Bottom) The New Acropolis Museum
in Athens, built to house the Parthenon
entertainment may now take a more scientific and educational form, but it
marbles that are still in Athens and, one day still needs to compete with rival popular attractions if archaeology is to thrive.
(it is hoped), the “Elgin Marbles” too.
Who Owns the Past?

Until recent decades, archaeologists gave little thought to the
question of the ownership of past sites and antiquities. Most
archaeologists themselves came from Western, industrialized
societies, the economic and political domination of which seemed
to give an almost automatic right to acquire antiquities and
excavate sites around the world. Since World War II, however, former
colonies have grown into independent states eager to uncover
their own past and assert control over their own heritage. Difficult
questions have therefore arisen. Should antiquities acquired for
Western museums during the colonial era be returned? And should
archaeologists be free to excavate the burials of groups whose
modern descendants may object on religious or other grounds?
Museums and the Return of Cultural Property

At the beginning of the nineteenth century Lord Elgin, a Scottish
diplomat, removed many of the marble sculptures that adorned
the Parthenon, the great fifth-century bce temple that crowns the

Acropolis in Athens. Elgin did so with the permission of the then Turkish
overlords of Greece, and later sold the sculptures to the British Museum,
where they still reside, displayed in a special gallery. The Greeks now want
the “Elgin Marbles” back.
The Greek claim for the return of the Acropolis marbles from the British
Museum has been given greater force by the construction of the new Acropolis
Museum. Plaster casts of all the “Elgin Marbles” now take their places in the
appropriate positions in the original sculptural scheme, along with those
sculptures that remained in Athens. These now sit there, patiently awaiting
the hoped-for return of their long-lost relatives. That in essence is the story so
far of perhaps the best-known case where an internationally famous museum
is under pressure to return cultural property to the country of origin.
But there are numerous other claims directed at European and North
American museums. The Berlin Museum, for example, holds the famous
bust of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti, which was shipped out of Egypt illegally.
The Greek government has officially asked France for the return of the Venus
de Milo, one of the masterworks of the Louvre, bought from Greece’s Ottoman
rulers. And Turkey has recently been successful in recovering art treasures,
including the “Lydian Hoard,” from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of
Art (which has also returned the now infamous “Euphronios Krater” to Italy,
see p. 312), and may now pursue Turkish statuary and objects in European
countries, including the British Museum.
Excavating Burials: Should We Disturb the Dead?

The question of excavating burials can be equally complex. For prehistoric
burials the problem is not so great, because we have no direct written
knowledge of the relevant culture’s beliefs and wishes. For burials dating from
historic times, however, religious beliefs are known to us in detail. We know, for
example, that the ancient Egyptians and Chinese, the Greeks, Etruscans, and
Romans, and the early Christians all feared disturbance of the dead. Yet it has
to be recognized that tombs were falling prey to the activities of robbers long
before archaeology began. Egyptian pharaohs in the twelfth century bce had
to appoint a commission to inquire into the wholesale plundering of tombs
at Thebes. Not a single Egyptian royal tomb, including that of Tutankhamun,
escaped the robbers completely. Similarly, Roman carved gravestones became
building material in cities and forts; and at Ostia, the port of ancient Rome,
tomb inscriptions have even been found serving as seats in a public latrine!
the nAtive AmericAns. For some Native Americans in North America,

archaeology has become a focal point for complaints about wrongdoings of
the past. They have expressed their grievances strongly in recent years, and
their political influence has resulted in legal mechanisms that sometimes

restrict or prevent archaeological excavations, or provide for the return to
Native American peoples of some collections now in museums. Apart from
the question of returning and/or reburying material, sometimes there have
been vehement objections to new excavations. The Chumash, for example,
refused permission for scientists to remove what may be the oldest human
remains in California, even though an offer was made to return and rebury
the bones after a year’s study. The bones, thought to be about 9000 years old,
were eroding out of a cliff on Santa Rosa Island, 100 km (62 miles) west of Los
Angeles. Under California’s state laws the fate of the bones lay with their most
likely descendants—and the Chumash were understandably angry about past
treatment of their ancestors’ skeletons, with hundreds of remains scattered in
various universities and museums. They preferred to see the bones destroyed
“in accordance with nature’s law” than to have other people interfere with
them. In other cases, however, Native American communities have provided for
the systematic curation of such remains once they have been returned to them.
As in Australia (see overleaf), there is no single, unified indigenous
tradition. Native Americans have wide-ranging attitudes toward the dead
and the soul. Nonetheless demands for reburial of ancestral remains are
common. The solution to the problem has been found to lie in acquiescence,
compromise, and collaboration. Often archaeologists have supported the
Seminole bones from Florida are reburied
in 1989 by archaeologists and Native
return of remains of fairly close ancestors of living people. Material has also
Americans at Wounded Knee. been returned that had no archaeological context and was thus of minimal
value to science.
Repatriation of older and more important material is a difficult issue.
The longstanding position of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA)
is that scientific and traditional interests in archaeological materials must
be balanced, weighted by the closeness of relationship to the modern group
making a claim and the scientific value of the remains or objects requested.
With the society’s support, in 1990 the Native American Graves Protection
and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was passed. It requires some 5000 federally
funded institutions and government agencies to inventory their collections
and assess the “cultural affiliation” of Native American skeletons, funerary
and sacred objects, and items of cultural patrimony. If cultural affiliation can
be shown, the human remains and objects must, on request, be returned
to the affiliated Native American tribe or Native Hawaiian organization.
Difficult problems lie in interpreting key terms in the law, such as “cultural
affiliation,” and in weighing diverse forms of evidence in the context of
prehistoric material. In addition to archaeological and historical information,
the law explicitly recognizes the validity of oral traditions. This has led to
broad expectations by tribes that prehistoric remains can be claimed if their
oral traditions say that its people were created in the same region where the
remains were found. However, when these expectations were tested

in court it was found that the law requires a balanced
consideration of oral tradition with scientific evidence.
An amendment to the NAGPRA regulations in 2010
extended rights to culturally unaffiliated remains as
long as these were found on tribal lands or areas of
aboriginal occupation. This means that US museums
will now have to relinquish control of many more
human remains to tribal groups.
Controversy and a legal battle dogged the bones of
“Kennewick Man,” found in 1996 in Washington State,
and radiocarbon dated to 9300 bp. Eight prominent
anthropologists sued the Army Corps of Engineers,
which has jurisdiction over the site, for permission
to study the bones, but the Corps wanted to hand
the skeleton to the local Native American Umatilla
tribe for reburial, in accordance with NAGPRA. The
scientists were extremely anxious to run tests,
since preliminary examination had suggested that
Kennewick Man was a nineteenth-century settler; its
early date raises complex, important, and fascinating
Facial features of Kennewick Man during questions about the peopling of the Americas. The Umatilla, on the other
reconstruction, with muscles added in clay.
hand, were adamantly against any investigation, insisting that their oral
tradition says their tribe has been part of this land since the beginning of time,
and so all bones recovered from here are necessarily their ancestors—and must
not be damaged for dating or genetic analysis. In 2002 a magistrate affirmed
the right of the scientists to study the bones and, despite subsequent legal
appeals, in June 2005 the battle (which cost millions of dollars in legal fees)
was finally won, and analysis began in earnest. In 2015, DNA testing proved
that Kennewick Man was closely related to the Colville tribe of northeastern
Washington State, the region where the remains were found. In 2016
legislation was passed to return the bones to a coalition of tribes, and they
were reburied in February 2017.
the AustrAliAn Aborigines. In Australia, the present climate of Aboriginal

emancipation and increased political power has focused attention on
wrongdoings during the colonial period, when anthropologists had little
respect for Aboriginal feelings and beliefs. Sacred sites were investigated
and published, burial sites desecrated, and cultural and skeletal material
exhumed, to be stored or displayed in museums. The Aborigines were
thus, by implication, seen as laboratory specimens. Inevitably, the fate of
all this material, and particularly of the bones, has assumed great symbolic
significance. Unfortunately, here as in other countries, archaeologists are

being blamed for the misdemeanors of the non-archaeologists who obtained
most of the human remains in question.
The view of Aborigines in some parts of Australia is that all human skeletal
material (and occasionally cultural material too) must be returned to them,
and then its fate will be decided. In some cases they themselves wish the
remains to be curated in conditions that anthropologists would consider
to be satisfactory, usually under Aboriginal control. Since the Aborigines
have an unassailable moral case, the Australian Archaeological Association
(AAA) is willing to return remains that are either quite modern or of “known
individuals where specific descendants can be traced,” and for these to be
reburied. Such remains, however, are somewhat the exception. The University
of Melbourne’s Murray Black Collection consists of skeletal remains from
more than 800 Aborigines, ranging in date from several hundred years to at
least 14,000 years old. They were dug up in the 1940s without any consultation
with local Aborigines. Owing to a lack of specialists the collection has still by
no means been exhaustively studied—but nevertheless it has been returned to
the relevant Aboriginal communities. In 1990 the unique series of burials from
Kow Swamp, 19,000 to 22,000 years old, were handed back to the Aboriginal
community and reburied; more recently the first skeleton found at Lake
Mungo, the world’s oldest known cremation (26,000 years bp), was returned to
the custody of the Aborigines of the Mungo area; and Aboriginal elders have
announced they may rebury all the skeletal material (up to 30,000 years old)
from Mungo.
Archaeologists are understandably alarmed at the prospect of having
to hand over material many thousands of years old. Some also point out
that the Aborigines—like indigenous peoples elsewhere—tend to forget
that not all of their recent forebears took pious care of the dead. But, not
least in the light of Aboriginal sufferings at European hands, their views
are entitled to respect.
The Responsibility of Collectors and Museums

It has become clear in recent years that private collectors and even public
museums, for centuries regarded as guardians and conservators of the
past, have become (in some cases) major causative agents of destruction.
The market in illegal antiquities—excavated illegally and clandestinely
with no published record—has become a major incentive for the looting of
archaeological sites. The looting is funded, whether directly or indirectly, by
unscrupulous private collectors and by unethical museums. All over the world
looters are continuing their destructive work. Several languages have a word
for them: in Greece they are archaiokapiloi, in Latin America huaqueros, and in
Italy tombaroli. They unearth beautiful, salable objects. But deprived of their
archaeological context, these objects no longer have the power to tell us much
The Responsibility of Collectors and Museums 309

Destruction and
Response: Mimbres UNITED STATES
l Mimbres
The Mimbres potters of the American Mimbres pots to sell on the market
Southwest created a unique art tradition for primitive art. Nor was this activity
in the prehistoric period, painting the necessarily illegal. In United States law
inside of hemispherical bowls with there is nothing to prevent excavation
vigorous animal and human forms. of any kind by the owner on private
These bowls are now much admired by land, and nothing to prevent the
archaeologists and art lovers. But this owner permitting others to destroy
fascination has led to the systematic archaeological sites in this way
looting of Mimbres sites on a scale (although some state laws, in New
unequaled in the United States, or Mexico and Arizona, for example,
indeed anywhere in the world. now protect human burials on both
The Mimbres people lived along a private and state land).
small river (also called the Mimbres) In the early 1960s, a method
in mud-built villages, similar in some of bulldozing Mimbres sites was
respects to those of the later Puebloans. developed that did not destroy all
Painted pottery began, as we now know, the pottery. The operators found that
around 550 ce, and reached its apogee by controlled bulldozing they could Animalian forms were a popular Mimbres
in the Classic Mimbres period, from remove a relatively small depth of soil subject. The “kill” hole allowed the object’s
spirit to be released.
about 1000 to 1130 ce. at a time and extract many of the pots
Systematic archaeological work on unbroken. In the process, sites were of
Mimbres sites began in the 1920s, but course completely destroyed, and all The Mimbres Foundation also
it was not in general well published. hope of establishing an archaeological reached the conclusion that
Looters soon found, however, that with context for the material was lost. archaeological excavation is an
pick and shovel they could unearth Since 1973 there has at last been a expensive form of conservation,
concerted archaeological response. and decided to purchase a number
The Mimbres Foundation, under the of surviving (or partially surviving)
direction of Steven LeBlanc, was Mimbres sites in order to protect them.
able to secure funding from Moreover, this is a lesson that has
private sources to undertake been learned more widely. Members
excavations in the remains of the Mimbres Foundation have
of some of the looted joined forces with other archaeologists
sites. It also made good and benefactors to form a national
progress in explaining organization, the Archaeological
to the owners of those Conservancy. Several sites in the United
sites how destructive this States have now been purchased and
looting process was to any conserved in this way. The story thus
hope of learning about the has, in some sense, a happy ending. But
Mimbres’ past. From 1975 to nothing can bring back the possibility of
1978 a series of field seasons really understanding Mimbres culture
at several partially looted sites and art, a possibility that did exist at
succeeded in establishing at least the beginning of the twentieth century
the outlines of Mimbres archaeology, before the devastating looting.
Mimbres bowl from the Classic period, showing and in putting the chronology upon a Unfortunately, in other parts of the
a ritual decapitation. sure footing. world there are similar stories to tell.

that is new about the past. Many of them end up on display in some of the
less scrupulous museums of the world. When a museum fails to indicate the
context of discovery, including the site the exhibit came from, it is often a sign
that the object displayed has come via the illicit market.
One such tombarolo, Luigi Perticarari, a robber in Tarquinia, Italy, published
his memoirs in 1986 and makes no apology for his trade. He has more first-
hand knowledge of Etruscan tombs than any archaeologist, but his activity
destroys the chance of anyone sharing that knowledge. He claims to have
emptied some 4000 tombs dating from the eighth to the third centuries bce
in thirty years. So it is that, while the world’s store of Etruscan antiquities in
museums and private collections grows larger, our knowledge of Etruscan
burial customs and social organization does not.
The same is true for the remarkable marble sculptures of the Cycladic
islands of Greece, dating to around 2500 bce. We admire the breathtaking
elegance of these works in the world’s museums, but we have little idea
of how they were produced or of the social and religious life of the Cycladic
communities that made them. Again, the contexts have been lost.
In the American Southwest, 90 percent of the Classic Mimbres sites
(c. 1000 ce) have now been looted or destroyed (see box opposite).
In southwestern Colorado, 60 percent of prehistoric Ancestral Pueblo
sites have been vandalized. Pothunters work at night, equipped with
two-way radios, scanners, and lookouts. It is very difficult to prosecute
them under the present legislation unless they are caught red-handed,
which is almost impossible.
The huaqueros of Central and South America, too, are interested only in
the richest finds, in this case gold—whole cemeteries are turned into fields
of craters, with bones, potsherds, mummy wrappings, and other objects
smashed and scattered. The remarkable tombs excavated between 1987 and
1990 at Sipán, northwestern Peru, of the Moche civilization, were rescued
from the plunderers only by the persistence and courage of the local Peruvian
archaeologist, Walter Alva.
So far as illicit antiquities are concerned, the spotlight has indeed turned
upon museums and private collectors. Many of the world’s great museums,
following the lead of the University of Pennsylvania Museum (the Penn
Museum) in 1970, now decline to purchase or receive by gift any antiquities
that cannot be shown to have been exported legally from their country of
origin. But others, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, have
in the past had no such scruples: Thomas Hoving, at that time director of
the museum, stated: “We are no more illegal in anything we have done than
Napoleon was when he brought all the treasures to the Louvre.” The J. Paul
Getty Museum, with its great wealth, has a heavy responsibility in this, and
has recently adopted a much more rigorous acquisition policy.

Such museums as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which in 1990 put
on display the collection of Shelby White and the late Leon Levy, and the
Getty Museum, which in 1994 exhibited (and then acquired) that of Barbara
Fleischman and the late Lawrence Fleischman—both collections with a
high proportion of antiquities of unknown provenience—must share some
responsibility for the prevalence of collecting in circumstances where
much of the money paid inevitably goes to reward dealers who are part
of the ongoing cycles of destruction, and thus ultimately the looters. The
responsibility borne by collectors who, in buying such works, indirectly
fund the looting process, is also now being recognized. It has been argued
that “collectors are the real looters.” Peter Watson, in his revealing survey
The Medici Conspiracy (2006), has outlined the surprising events that led the
Italian government to bring criminal charges against the former curator of
antiquities at the Getty, and to recover from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The “Weary Herakles”: the lower part,
one of their most celebrated antiquities, the “Euphronios Krater,” for which
excavated in Turkey in 1980, and the upper they had in 1972 paid a million dollars, but without obtaining secure evidence
part, which was exhibited in the Boston
Museum of Fine Arts, are now reunited
of its provenience. As the Romans had it: “caveat emptor” (“buyer beware”).
in Turkey. It remains a real paradox that collectors, who often have a genuine feeling
for the antiquities that they amass, are ultimately funding the looting that is
the main threat to the world’s archaeological heritage.
There are signs that things may be improving, however. The Dealing
in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act was approved by the United Kingdom
Parliament in 2003. For the first time it is now a criminal offence in the
UK knowingly to deal in illicitly excavated antiquities, whether from the
UK or overseas. And in New York in June 2003 the United States Court of
Appeals upheld the conviction of the antiquities dealer Frederick Schultz
for conspiring to deal in antiquities stolen from Egypt. Schultz is a former
president of the National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental, and
Primitive Art and has in the past sold antiquities to some leading museums
in the United States. A jail term for so prominent a dealer will send a clear
message to some conspicuous collectors and museum directors that they
should be more attentive in future in the exercise of “due diligence” when
acquiring unprovenienced antiquities.
Recent cases include:
• The “Weary Herakles.” Two parts of a Roman marble statue of the second
century ce are now separate. The lower part was excavated at Perge in Turkey
in 1980 and is in the Antalya Museum, while the joining upper part was
purchased by the late Leon Levy and was for some years exhibited at the
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, to which Levy gave a half share. The museum
and Levy’s widow Shelby White initially resisted Turkish claims to the piece,
but it has now been returned to Turkey.

A splendid silver dish from the looted Sevso
Treasure, one of the major scandals in the
recent story of illicit antiquities.
• The Sevso Treasure. A splendid late Roman assemblage of silver vessels was
acquired as an investment by the Marquess of Northampton, but was
subsequently claimed in a New York court action by Hungary, Croatia, and
Lebanon. Possession was awarded to the marquess, who then found the
treasure unsalable and sued his former legal advisors in London for their
poor advice at the time of purchase; an out-of-court settlement, reportedly
in excess of £15 million, was agreed on confidential terms in 1999. Hungary is
now seeking to obtain this material, and perhaps Lord Northampton will sell
his treasure after all. It was exhibited at a private viewing at Bonham’s, the
London auctioneers, in 2006, and nothing has been heard of it since.
• The Getty Affair. The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles found itself in
the spotlight of publicity in 2005 when its Curator of Antiquities, Marion
True (subsequently fired), went on trial in Italy on charges relating to the
purchase by the Getty of antiquities allegedly illegally excavated in Italy.
The trial ran out of time, without verdict, but the Getty Museum meanwhile
by agreement returned many looted antiquities to Italy. The Getty Museum
has also now adopted a strict acquisition policy fully in line with the 1970
UNESCO Convention against the illicit trade in artifacts.
• The UCL Aramaic Incantation Bowls. In 2005 University College London
established a committee of inquiry into the provenience of 654 Aramaic
incantation bowls (dating to the sixth to seventh centuries ce, and believed
to come from Iraq) that had been lent for purposes of study by a prominent
Norwegian collector, Martin Schøyen. It did so following claims that the
bowls had been illegally exported from their country of origin. UCL received

Aramaic incantation bowl from the sixth to
seventh century ce with a text, written in
black ink, intended to bind demons, deities,
and other hostile forces who might harm
the owner.
the report of the committee in July 2006, but subsequently returned the
bowls to Schøyen, with whom it had concluded a confidential out-of-
court settlement preventing publication of the report, and agreeing to
pay an undisclosed sum to Schøyen. This episode highlights the need for
“due diligence” when antiquities are accepted, on loan as well as through
gift or purchase, by public institutions. The full story of the UCL Aramaic
incantation bowls remains to be told.
It is ironic that a love and respect for the past and for the antiquities that have
come down to us should lead to such destructive and acquisitive behavior.
“Who owns the past?” is indeed the key issue if the work of archaeology is to
continue, and to provide us with new information about our shared heritage
and about the processes by which we have become who we are. In that sense
we may well ask “Does the past have a future?” That is the theme addressed
in our final chapter.
Study Questions
1 Who owns the past?

2 What are some ways in which symbols from the past have led to conflict?
3 What are ethics? What sorts of ethical issues do archaeologists encounter?
4 Why are many archaeologists critical of “pseudoarchaeology”?
5 What are illicit antiquities?

Summary
the pAst hAs diFFerent meanings for different people, and often personal identity
is defined by the past. Increasingly archaeology is playing a role in the definition
of national identity, where the past is used to legitimize the present by reinforcing
a sense of national greatness. Ethnicity, which is just as strong a force today as
in earlier times, relies upon the past for legitimization as well, sometimes with
destructive consequences.
ethics is the science of what is right and wrong, or morality, and most branches
of archaeology are seen to have an ethical dimension. Until recent decades
archaeologists gave little thought to such questions as “who owns the past?”
Now every archaeological decision should take ethical concerns into account.
We cAnnot simply dismiss the alternative theories of fringe archaeology as

farcical, because they have been so widely believed. Anyone who understands how
archaeology proceeds will already see why such writings are a delusion. The real
antidote is to ask “where is the evidence?” Knowledge advances by asking questions
and looking skeptically at the answers.
the ArchAeology of every land has its own contribution to make to the
understanding of the human past. Although earlier scholars behaved with flagrant
disregard for the feelings and beliefs of indigenous peoples, interest in these matters
today is not an attempt further to appropriate the indigenous past.
perhAps the sAddest type of archaeological destruction comes from the looting
of sites. Through this act, all information is destroyed in the search for highly salable
artifacts. Museums and collectors bear some of the responsibility for this. Museums
are also under increasing pressure to return antiquities to their lands of origin.
Further Reading
General introductions to the topics Cambridge University Press:
covered in this chapter include: Cambridge & New York.
Jenkins, T. 2016. Keeping Their Marbles:
Brodie, N., Kersel, M., Luke, C., & Tubb, How the Treasures of the Past
K. W. (eds). 2008. Archaeology, Ended Up in Museums and Why
Cultural Heritage, and the Antiquities They Should Stay There. Oxford
Trade. University Press of University Press: Oxford.
Florida: Gainsville. Renfrew, C. 2009. Loot, Legitimacy and
Feder, K. 2008. Frauds, Myths, Ownership. Duckworth: London.
and Mysteries: Science and Watson, P. & Todeschini, C. 2006. The
Pseudoscience in Archaeology. Medici Conspiracy. PublicAffairs:
McGraw-Hill: New York. New York.
Greenfield, J. 2007. The Return
of Cultural Treasures (3rd ed.). [See p. 345 for a list of useful websites]

12 The Future of the Past
Managing Our Heritage
The Destruction of the Past 317 Study Questions 336

Summary 337
The Response: Further Reading 337
Survey, Conservation,
and Mitigation 319
Survey 320
Conservation and Mitigation 320
❑ Conservation in Mexico City 322
The Practice of CRM in the

United States 324
International Protection 325
❑ CRM in Practice: The Metro Rail
Project 326
Publication, Archives,
and Resources 329
What Use Is the Past? 330
Building a Career
in Archaeology 331
Lisa J. Lucero 332
Rasmi Shoocongdej 333
Douglas C. Comer 334
Shadreck Chirikure 335
What is the future of archaeology? Can our discipline continue to produce
new information about the human past, the evolution of our species, and
the achievements of humankind? This is one of the dilemmas that currently
confront all archaeologists, and indeed all those concerned to understand the
human past. For just as global warming and increasing pollution threaten the
future ecology of our planet, so the record of the past is today faced by forces
of destruction that demand a coherent and energetic response.
Some of those forces of destruction have been discussed earlier, and others
are confronted here. The big question continues to be: What can be done?
That is the problem that faces us, the solution to which will determine
the future both of our discipline and of the material record that it seeks to
understand. Here we review two parallel approaches: conservation (protection)
and mitigation. The two, working together, have generated in recent years new
attitudes toward the practice of archaeology.
The Destruction of the Past

There are two main agencies of destruction, both of them human. One is the
construction of roads, quarries, dams, office blocks, etc. These are conspicuous
and the threat is at least easily recognizable. The other, agricultural
intensification, is slower but much wider in its extent, thus in the long term far
more destructive. Elsewhere, reclamation schemes are transforming the nature
of the environment, so that arid lands are being flooded and wetlands, such
as those in Florida, are being reclaimed through drainage. The result is the loss
of remarkable archaeological evidence. A third agent of destruction is conflict,
the most obvious current threat being in the war zones of the Middle East.
There are two further human agencies of destruction that should not be
overlooked. The first is tourism, which, while economically having important
effects on archaeology, makes the effective conservation of archaeological sites
more difficult. The second, as we have seen in Chapter 11, is not new, but has
grown dramatically in scale: the looting of archaeological sites by those who
The Destruction of the Past 317

The Warka Vase (below) was looted from the dig for monetary gain, seeking only salable objects and destroying everything
National Museum of Iraq, Baghdad, during
the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Fortunately else in their search. More ancient remains have been lost in the last two
it was recovered (bottom) and though in decades than ever before in the history of the world.
pieces, these were probably ancient breaks.
AgriculturAl DAmAge. Ever increasing areas of the Earth, once uncultivated

or cultivated by traditional non-intensive methods, are being opened up to
mechanized farming. In other areas, forest plantations now cover what was
formerly open land, and tree roots are destroying archaeological sites.
Although most countries keep some control over the activities of
developers and builders, the damage to archaeological sites from farming is
much more difficult to assess. The few published studies make sober reading.
One shows that in Britain even those sites that are notionally protected—by
being listed on the national Schedule of Ancient Monuments—are not, in
reality, altogether safe. The position may be much better in Denmark and in
certain other countries, but elsewhere only the most conspicuous sites are
protected. The more modest field monuments and open settlements are not,
and these are the sites that are suffering from mechanized agriculture.
DAmAge in WAr. Among the most distressing outrages of recent years has
been the continuing destruction, sometimes deliberate, of monuments and
artifacts in the course of armed conflict. Already, during World War II, historic
buildings in England were deliberately targeted in German bombing raids.
In war the sentiments are sometimes national or ethnic, rather than
religious. Such was the case in the civil war in Yugoslavia, although it also
had religious overtones. The bridge at Mostar in Bosnia, built by the Ottoman
Turks in 1566 and a symbol of Bosnian identity, was destroyed by Croatian
forces in 1993. Although it has now been rebuilt, the loss of the original
structure was one of the most tragic acts in Europe since World War II: the
deliberate destruction of cultural heritage on purely ethnic grounds.
The failure of Coalition forces in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to secure the
National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad allowed the looting of the collections,
including the celebrated Warka Vase, one of the most notable finds from
the early Sumerian civilization—although, like many other important
antiquities, this was later returned to the museum. The failure was all the
more shocking since archaeologists in the United States had met with
representatives of the Defense Department some months prior to the war
to warn of the risk of looting in museums and at sites, and archaeologists
in Britain had similarly indicated the dangers to the British government
months before the war began. Only parts of the collection were taken, and
it seems that it was the work both of looters from the street, who smashed
cases, decapitated statues, and trashed offices, but also perhaps some
well-informed individuals who knew what they were looking for and who
318 12 • The Future of the Past

Objects from Tutankhamun’s tomb
looted from the Cairo Museum in
2011, and subsequently recovered by
Egyptian authorities.
had access to storeroom keys. It is these who are likely to have taken the
museum’s collection of Mesopotamian cylinder seals, the finest in the world,
for sale to collectors overseas.
In 2011, during the “Arab Spring” in Egypt, civil unrest gave the opportunity
for thieves to break into the Cairo Museum and steal a number of significant
antiquities, although the authorities rapidly restored order. Continuing
conflict in Syria and Egypt is having a devastating effect on archaeology,
with widespread looting of sites as well as thefts from museums. The effects
are especially serious for Egypt, which relies so heavily upon archaeological
tourism. In August 2013 the archaeological museum in Malawi, in Egypt’s
Minya region, was destroyed and looted—sarcophagi and statues were
damaged, and curators revealed that 1040 of 1080 objects in the collection were
missing, presumably now heading for the burgeoning trade in illicit antiquities.
It seems all the more extraordinary that the United States and the United
Kingdom only ratified the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of
Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict in 2009 and 2017 respectively.
The Response: Survey, Conservation, and Mitigation

In many countries of the world where the material remains of the past are
valued as an important component of the national heritage, the response has
been the development of a public archaeology: the acceptance that the public
and therefore both national and regional governments have a responsibility
to avoid unnecessary destruction of that heritage. And of course there is an
international dimension also. This acceptance implies that steps should
be taken to conserve what remains, often with the support of protective
legislation. And when development is undertaken, which is often necessary
and inescapable—to build freeways for instance, or to undertake commercial
development, or to bring land into cultivation—steps need to be taken to
The Response: Survey, Conservation, and Mitigation 319

research and record any archaeological remains that in the process are likely
to be destroyed. In this way the effects of development can be mitigated.
These approaches have highlighted the need, in advance of any potential
development, for reliable information concerning whatever archaeological
remains may be present. This puts crucial emphasis on one of the key
developments in the archaeological methodology of the late twentieth
century: site location and survey. The actions undertaken in response to a
threat need a logical and natural order: survey, conservation, and mitigation.
Within the United States, what are termed “preservation” laws to protect
heritage resources do not guarantee that archaeological remains will be
preserved. The laws mandate a weighing of options and dictate the process
by which the value of the resource is assessed against the value of the
development. In rare cases, the value of a site is so great that it will be preserved
and a project canceled or rerouted. In the vast majority of cases, though, sites
are excavated, recorded, and destroyed: a compromise between development
and heritage needs.
Survey
Before major developments are undertaken, a key part of the planning phase
must be a survey or assessment of the likely effects of such development
upon what may be termed the archaeological resource. Such an assessment
extends beyond archaeology to more recent history and other aspects of the
environment, including threatened plant and animal species. The cultural
heritage, and especially its material remains, needs to be carefully assessed.
Such assessment today will often involve the use of satellite imagery as
well as aerial photography. It requires mapping with the aid of GIS. And it
also needs to involve field survey, using on-the-ground evaluation through
field walking (sometimes called “ground truthing”) so that unknown
archaeological sites—and extant historical buildings and infrastructure,
historic landscapes, and traditional cultural properties—can be located and
evaluated before development begins.
Conservation and Mitigation

Most nations today ensure a degree of protection for their major monuments
and archaeological sites. In the United Kingdom, as early as 1882, the first
Ancient Monuments Protection Act was passed and the first Inspector of
Ancient Monuments appointed: the energetic archaeologist and pioneer
excavator General Pitt-Rivers (see pp. 22–23). A “schedule” of ancient
monuments was drawn up, which were to be protected by law. Several of
the most important monuments were taken into “guardianship,” whereby
they were conserved and opened to the public under the supervision of the
Ancient Monuments Inspectorate.

In the United States, the first major federal legislation for archaeological
protection, the American Antiquities Act, was signed into law in 1906 by
Theodore Roosevelt. The act set out three provisions: that the damage,
destruction, or excavation of historic or prehistoric ruins or monuments
on federal land without permission would be prohibited; that the president
would have the authority to establish national landmarks and associated
reserves on federal land; and that permits could be granted for the excavation
or collection of archaeological materials on federal land to qualified
institutions that pursued such excavations for the purpose of increasing
knowledge of the past and preserving the materials.
The American Antiquities Act set the foundation and fundamental
principles for archaeology in the United States. These include that federal
protection is limited to federal land (although some individual states and
local governments have their own laws); that excavation is a permitted
activity for those seeking to learn and conduct research in the public interest;
that unpermitted archaeological activities and vandalism are criminally
punishable; and that archaeological resources are important enough that
the president may create reserves for protection independent of the other
branches of government. These principles continue through the many
other federal laws that followed. Today, the principal laws that practicing
archaeologists must know and follow include the National Historic
Preservation Act of 1966, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the
Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, the Abandoned Shipwrecks
Act of 1987, and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation
Act of 1990. These laws, and a host of others, updated and expanded the
basic principles and practices of protecting, preserving, and managing
archaeological resources on federal lands in the United States (see the
following section on Cultural Resource Management, pp. 324–25).
Similar provisions hold for the major monuments of many nations. But
in the field of heritage management it is with the less obvious, perhaps less
important sites that problems arise. Above all, it is difficult or impossible for
sites to be protected if their existence is not known or recognized; this is why
the role of survey is so crucial.
The conservation of the archaeological record is a fundamental principle
of heritage management. It can be brought about by partnership agreement
with the landowner—for instance to avoid plowing on recognized sites.
Measures can be taken to mitigate the effects of coastal erosion (although
this can be very difficult) or inappropriate land use. And above all, effective
planning legislation can be used to prevent commercial development in
sensitive archaeological areas. Indeed, increasingly, the approach is to think
of entire landscapes and their conservation, rather than focusing upon
isolated archaeological sites.

Conservation MEXICO
in Mexico City l
Mexico City
When the Spanish Conquistadors under (Right) Skeleton

of a jaguar with a
Hernán Cortés occupied the Aztec
greenstone ball in
capital, Tenochtitlan, in 1521, they its mouth, found
destroyed its buildings and established in the Great Temple.
their own capital, Mexico City, on the
same site. Various relatively small-scale was radically transformed early in 1978
In 1790 the now-famous statue of excavations were carried out on when electricity workers discovered
the Aztec mother goddess Coatlicue remains within the city as they came to a large stone carved with a series of
was found, and also the well-known light in the course of building work. But reliefs. The Department of Salvage
Calendar Stone, but it was not until the in 1975 a more coherent initiative was Archaeology of the National Institute of
twentieth century that more systematic taken: the institution by the Department Anthropology and History took charge.
archaeological work took place. of Pre-Hispanic Monuments of the Within days, a huge monolith, 3.25 m
Basin of Mexico Project. Its aim is to (10 ft. 7 in.) in diameter, was revealed,
halt the destruction of archaeological depicting the dismembered body of
remains during the continuing growth the Aztec goddess Coyolxauhqui who,
of the city. In 1977, the Museum of according to myth, had been killed by
Tenochtitlan Project was begun, her brother, the war god Huitzilopochtli.
with the aim of excavating the
area where remains of what
appeared to be the Great (Below) The Great Temple excavation site, with
stairways visible of successive phases of the
Temple of the Aztecs
monument. The building was originally pyramidal
had been found in in form, surmounted by twin temples to the war
1948. The project god Huitzilopochtli and the rain god Tlaloc.
(Above) The Great Stone, found in 1978, provided the catalyst

for the Great Temple excavations. The goddess Coyolxauhqui
is shown decapitated and dismembered—killed by her
brother, the war god Huitzilopochtli.

The Museum of Tenochtitlan Project,
under the direction of Eduardo Matos
Moctezuma, became the Great Temple
Project, which over the next few
years brought to light one of the most
remarkable archaeological sites
in Mexico.
No one had realized how much
would be preserved of the Great offerings to the temple’s two gods, (Above) This massive stone slab depicting the
Temple. Although the Spaniards had Huitzilopochtli and the rain god god Tlaltecuhtli (“Lord of the Earth”) was found
at the site in 2006. The monolith was moved to
razed the standing structure to the Tlaloc—objects of obsidian and jade,
the Templo Mayor Museum in 2010.
ground in 1521, this pyramid was terracotta and stone sculptures, and
the last of a series of rebuildings. other special dedications, including rare
Beneath the ruins of the last temple coral and the remains of a jaguar buried
the excavations revealed those of with a ball of greenstone in its mouth. Mexico has regained one of its greatest
earlier temples. A major area of Mexico City has pre-Columbian buildings, and the Great
In addition to these architectural now been turned into a permanent Temple of the Aztecs is once again one
remains was a wonderful series of museum and national monument. of the marvels of Tenochtitlan.
When considering the impact of commercial or industrial development,

one aspect of mitigation is the carefully planned avoidance of damage to the
archaeological record. A well-considered strategy in advance of development
will usually favour this approach. In some cases, however, the development
necessarily involves damage to the archaeological record. It is at this point that
rescue or salvage archaeology becomes appropriate. Rarely, when particularly
important archaeological remains are unexpectedly uncovered, development
may be halted entirely (for an example, see box opposite and above).
It is inevitable in the case of major developments, such as the construction
of a freeway, that many archaeological sites will be encountered. In the survey
stage of the planning process, most of these will have been located, observed,
noted, and evaluated. A mitigation plan addresses what steps are required
to protect the archaeological record or recover significant information if
destruction cannot be avoided. In some cases it may be possible to alter the
route of the freeway: that is one aspect of mitigation. But usually, if the project
is to go ahead, the “preventive” archaeology will involve the investigation of
the site by appropriate means of sampling, including excavation.
In many countries a significant proportion of the budget available for
archaeological research is now deliberately assigned to these projects, where

damage to the archaeological record seems inevitable and where it can be
mitigated in this way. There is a growing presumption that sites that are not
threatened should not be excavated if there is a potentially informative site
that can provide comparable excavation, the future of which is threatened by
development. It is increasingly realized that important research questions can
be answered in the course of such mitigation procedures.
The Practice of CRM in the United States

Over the past four decades American archaeology has become embedded in
Cultural Resource Management (CRM), a complex of laws, regulations, and
professional practice designed to manage historic buildings and sites, cultural
landscapes, and other cultural and historic places. The practice of CRM is often
known as “applied archaeology.”
The National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental
Policy Act are the major legal bases for CRM. These laws require US government
agencies to consider the environmental impacts of their actions (through an
“environmental assessment,” which may lead to an “environmental impact
statement”), including effects on historical, archaeological, and cultural values.
The role of State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO) was created in each US
state. Each agency runs its own compliance program.
Projects in which US government agencies are involved—whether on federal
land or on other lands but federally funded or requiring a federal permit—
must be reviewed to determine their effects on environmental, cultural, and
historical resources. CRM programs in state and local governments, federal
agencies, academic institutions, and private consulting firms have grown out
of this requirement. The SHPOs coordinate many CRM activities, and keep files
on historic and prehistoric sites, structures, buildings, districts, and landscapes.
Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act requires federal
agencies to identify historic places of all kinds (archaeological sites, historic
buildings, Native American sites, etc.) that may be affected by their actions, in
consultation with SHPOs, tribes, and others. This identification and evaluation
is organized into three phases. The goal of Phase I is to identify all structures or
features that may be historic and could be placed onto the National Register
of Historic Places. This often requires both field survey and the examination
of published material. Phase II evaluation is needed when a historic structure,
feature, or archaeological site needs to be assessed to determine whether it
is eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. Often this
process is called a Determination of Eligibility, or “DOE.”
If it is found that significant sites are present and that they will be adversely
affected, ways to mitigate any negative effects are sought. Often this involves
redesigning the project to prevent damage. If avoidance is not possible or
feasible, Phase III, data recovery, is required. For archaeological sites, this often

includes excavations to recover significant data before they are destroyed.
Key Concepts If the parties cannot agree on what to do, an independent body known as the
CRM in the USA Advisory Council on Historic Preservation makes a recommendation and then
the responsible federal agency makes its final decision.
CRM (Cultural Resource Most surveys and data recovery projects in the USA are carried out by
Management) or “applied private firms—sometimes companies that specialize in CRM work, but
archaeology” accounts for more otherwise by branches of large engineering, planning, or environmental impact
than 90 percent of the field
assessment companies. Some academic institutions, museums, and non-profit
archaeology carried out in the
USA today
organizations also carry out CRM work. CRM-based surveys and excavations
now comprise at least 90 percent of the field archaeology carried out in the USA.
Legal Basis: under Section 106 of The review system under Section 106 can produce excellent archaeological
the National Historic Preservation research, but research interests must be balanced with other public interests,
Act, archaeological investigation
especially the concerns of Native American tribes and other communities.
is often carried out in advance of
projects on federal land, using
The quality of work depends largely on the integrity and skill of
federal funds, or requiring a federal the participants—agency employees, SHPOs, tribal and community
permit. The assessment of historic representatives, and private-sector archaeologists. Among the recurring
places stipulated in Section 106 problems are quality control in fieldwork, applying the results of fieldwork
follows three phases; identification,
to important research topics, publication and other dissemination of results,
evaluation, and, if measures
cannot be taken to avoid damage,
and the long-term preservation and management of recovered artifacts.
data recovery One good example of this process is the Metro Rail Project (see box overleaf),
although not all CRM projects are so well managed. Particularly in the case of
Funding: generally speaking, the small projects, which are carried out by the thousands, it is easy for very shoddy
proponent of the construction or
work to be done and little useful data to be produced. But on the other hand,
land-use project pays for the work,
whether that party is a federal,
large excavation projects find huge numbers of artifacts, and these have to be
state, or local agency, or a private carefully stored—and this becomes more and more of a problem as time passes
developer and new excavations are conducted. Large-scale CRM excavations also tend to
be underfunded. Since Tennessee-Tombigbee and other similar projects in the
Compliance: project proponents
1970s and 1980s, the emphasis has shifted toward remote sensing and planning
fund legally required compliance
work that includes inventory
for the management of archaeological resources in ways that minimize the
(survey), evaluation of a resource’s need for excavations. The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) has also
importance, assessment of helped to fund a Register of Professional Archaeologists in an attempt to
impacts to important resources, improve standards. Professional requirements and qualifications have been
and mitigation (which may include
established by the Department of the Interior, various land-managing agencies,
avoidance, excavation, and
conservation)
and even some local governments. Permits to undertake archaeological work
require credentials, experience, and acceptable past performance.
Outcome: the fieldwork typically
results in at least a report filed International Protection
with the SHPO and data entered in
Since world government is currently based upon the effective autonomy of the
government and other databases.
Many CRM projects also result
nation states of the United Nations, measures of conservation and mitigation
in published journal articles, likewise operate at the level of the nation states. Only in a few cases does
monographs, and books some broader perspective prevail, often through UNESCO (the United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization).

CRM in Practice:
The Metro Rail Project UNITED
STATES
• Phoenix
Work conducted by Archaeological (Right) Excavations in progress at the

Consulting Services (ACS) in 2005–8 Pueblo Grande site.
along the 31.5-km (19.6-mile) Central
Phoenix/East Valley Light Rail corridor since the rail route traversed numerous
in Arizona discovered nine new sites, prehistoric villages occupied by the
and greatly increased knowledge of Hohokam. It was already known that the
twenty known sites in this busy urban important site of Pueblo Grande was
area. Most of the work was carried out occupied for about 1000 years, from
at the Hohokam site of Pueblo Grande c. 450/500 to 1450/1500 ce.
in the City of Phoenix, and that of La For example, the Salt River Pima-
Plaza in the City of Tempe. The project Native American Involvement Maricopa Indian Community expressed
confirmed that the area was home to The work involved early and continuous its appreciation for being contacted
several different peoples during 1500 consultation with a wide range of in a respectful manner regarding all
years of occupation. groups, including local Native American discoveries, and more generally for
The Light Rail Transit Project was communities, the City of Phoenix ACS’s informative and cooperative
constructed by Valley Metro Rail Inc. Archaeologist, and the Four Southern nature. Other groups involved included
(METRO) and, as with any project Tribes Cultural Resources Working the Gila River Indian Community, the
that receives federal funding, METRO Group. Trust and respect was built with Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation and the
was legally required to undertake all such bodies, especially with regard Hopi Tribe. It was agreed that, if tribal
archaeological investigations before to burials, and the project certainly met consultations concluded that excavation
and during construction. More than this aim, since an excellent working was appropriate, any human remains
1000 features were encountered, and relationship was developed and and associated objects found would
over a quarter of a million artifacts, maintained with all consulting parties. be repatriated to the communities.
Map of the
19th Ave.
0 2 km
Phoenix
Camelback Rd 0 1 mile
metropolitan
area, showing
the course of the
N
Central Avenue
P H O E N I X new rail corridor

in red.
44th St
S C O T T S D A L E
Dos Casas
McDowell Rd
202 Turney 3
101
Original
Washington St
Phoenix
Townsite Los Pueblos Arriba
Pueblo Grande
Pueblo Dutch
Patricio Canal Ruin
16th St
ve
r M E S A
i La Plaza
l t R
Sa T E M P E
Apache Blvd/
10 Tempe Townsite
Main St
Las Acequias
Archaeological site Municipal boundary Project centerline

for human remains. Once again,
all ground disturbance was closely
watched, and the procedure was the
same as for Zone 1, except that a
single archaeologist monitored the
excavations. Zone 3 comprised areas
outside known site locations that were
considered to have moderate sensitivity
Artifacts found by the for cultural resources—most likely
Metro Rail Project at La to be historic and prehistoric canal
Plaza included (clockwise alignments. Excavations here required
from left): stone axe heads;
stone palettes; a shell dog
spot checking. Finally, Zone 4 was
pendant; and a “three defined as locations where there were
orifice” red-on-buff jar. no known archaeological resources,
with no systematic monitoring required.
Archaeological Investigation by archaeologists. If any features or Contractors were merely instructed
Four “sensitivity zones” were defined, artifacts were found, construction to notify archaeologists if any cultural
each of which required different would be stopped briefly so that materials were found. Sensitivity
monitoring. Zone 1 comprised archaeologists could evaluate whether training of construction crews was
prehistoric habitation sites with known further investigation was needed. carried out, and contact was maintained
human remains. In these areas all Zone 2 was defined as prehistoric with them throughout, with occasional
ground disturbance was monitored habitation sites with the potential spot checks of open trenches.
the WorlD heritAge list. Under the World Heritage Convention of 1972,
the World Heritage Committee can place sites on the World Heritage List.
At the time of writing there are 759 cultural sites on the list (some of which
are illustrated overleaf), along with more than 200 natural and mixed sites.
Although being on the list does not in itself afford protection, and certainly
does not bring additional international resources to assist in conservation,
it does act as an incentive for the responsible nation state to ensure that
recognized standards are met.
There is in addition a World Heritage in Danger List that highlights the
needs of specific threatened sites. The ancient city of Bam in Iran, seriously
damaged by an earthquake in December 2003, is a case in point, as is the
Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan, which has suffered sadly through war and
unrest (see p. 300). The walled city of Baku in Azerbaijan is another major site,
damaged by an earthquake in November 2000 and now receiving support.
countering the trAffic in illicit Antiquities. The principal

international measure against the traffic in illicit antiquities is the 1970
UNESCO Convention on the Means of P Preventing the Illicit Import,
Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. But its principles
are not directly enforced by international law, and depend rather on national
legislation and on bilateral agreements between nations. The responsibilities

UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
(Clockwise from above left) Twelfth-

century minaret at Jam, Afghanistan,
decorated with stucco and glazed
tile; one of 500 statues of Buddha at
the eighth-century Buddhist temple
at Borobudur, Indonesia; Fatehpur
Sikri, India, capital city of the sixteenth-
century Mughal emperor Akbar; spiral
minaret, part of the great ninth-century
mosque at Samarra, Iraq; the oval
“pyramid” at the wonderfully preserved
Maya city of Uxmal, Mexico; twelfth-
century rock-cut Ethiopian orthodox
church at Lalibela.

of collectors and museums were reviewed in Chapter 11. There are signs that
it is becoming more difficult to sell recently looted antiquities on the open
market, at any rate in some countries, but the problem remains a massive one.
Protecting the culturAl heritAge in times of WAr. The 1954 Hague

Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed
Conflict and its protocols in principle offer a degree of protection. In practice,
however, they have not been effective and, as noted earlier, have only recently
been ratified by the United Kingdom and by the United States. Both nations
were criticized for their shortcomings during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
These international initiatives are all important, and potentially significant.

But at present they are very limited in their effectiveness. In the future they
may be better supported, but most of the effective measures safeguarding
the future of the past still work primarily at a national level.
Publication, Archives, and Resources

The pace of discovery through the surveys conducted to assess environmental
impact and the excavation procedures undertaken in mitigation is remarkable.
But the results are often not well published or otherwise made available either
to specialists or to the public. In the United States there is an obligation that
environmental impact statements and a summary of any measures taken in
mitigation should be lodged with the state archive, but not that they should
be published. In Greece the government has for some years failed to fund
publication of the Archaiologikon Deltion, the official record of nationally funded
excavations. The record is better in France and to some extent in Germany.
But few countries can boast effective publication of the quite considerable
activities undertaken, generally with a measure of state funding.
In some countries this has led to a division between the practice of
academic archaeologists (working in universities and museums) and of those
undertaking contract archaeology, whether funded by the developer or by the
state, but in both cases working to mitigate the impact of development. The
work of the former is supposed to be problem-oriented and often does indeed
lead to publication in national or international archaeological journals and in
detailed monographs. The work of the contract archaeologist is sometimes
carefully coordinated, leading to informative regional and national surveys.
But in too many instances its publication is not well coordinated at all.
The solution to these problems is not yet clear. But one possibility is
certainly emerging: online publication. In this respect some of the major
museums have led the way, making the catalogs of their collections available
online. Few contract archaeologists currently make their environmental
impact statements or mitigation reports available in that way, but this may
Publication, Archives, and Resources 329

one day become a requirement: a condition for funding in the first place.
In the United Kingdom an important initiative has been taken by the
national archaeological Portable Antiquities Scheme. There the practice
of metal detecting in the search for archaeological artifacts is not prohibited
by law, as it is in many countries, and this has been a concern to professional
archaeologists. But at least state funding has been established for a scheme
whereby metal detectorists can voluntarily report their finds to a reporting
officer, and many in fact do so. In particular the results are being made
available online, with a significant increase in information about the
distributions of particular classes of artifact. Thus some of the traditional
barriers between professional researchers and the wider public are breaking
down. It is likely that in the future excavation data will also become available
online and thus more rapidly accessible than is often currently the case. The
obligation to inform the public, who ultimately provide the resources for
much of the research, is being met.
What Use Is the Past?

The popularity of archaeology has markedly grown in recent years, if television
programs and magazine articles are used as a measure. Certainly the number
of archaeology students in university courses has increased greatly in many
countries. And the world’s great museums have ever-increasing visitor
numbers. As we have seen, in many countries public resources are invested in
conservation, and developers are obliged to ensure that proper measures are
undertaken in mitigation of their impact upon the cultural environment. But
are these resources expended simply to satisfy the idle curiosity of the world’s
citizens? Is their main purpose simply to create agreeable historic sites to visit?
We think that there is more at work than this. It can be argued that there
is today a growing awareness that humankind needs to feel and to know that
it has a past—a past that can be documented securely by concrete material
evidence that we can all access, examine, and assess. For without our roots
we are lost. Over recent generations those roots are well represented by our
friends, by our families, and by our existing communities. But in a deeper
sense, and in a deeper past, we are all in this together. The different religions
of the world provide meaning for the lives of many people. But they do not
all agree, or so it might seem, about some of the questions of human origins
and early history that we have been discussing here. Some offer creation
stories that are profound and illuminating. Each of these can be enriched by
knowledge of the material evidence for early human development. The finds
are there, in every part of the world. And more finds continue to be made.
It is abundantly clear, from the pace of archaeological discovery, that there
is more to learn. That is one reason why the subject is so interesting. And it
always will be. So long as the practices of conservation and mitigation are

maintained we shall continue to learn more about the human past, and in that
sense about what it means to be human. We hope that such will be the future
of the past. And we do not doubt that it will be useful.
Building a Career in Archaeology

There are a variety of careers in archaeology—whether, for example, in the field
of archaeological research (in a university or as an independent researcher),
or in a more administrative capacity as a government employee, or in the
business of heritage tourism. To show how an archaeological career could
develop, we have invited four professionals, all earning a living by doing
archaeology, to tell his or her own story.
Each is an established archaeologist but at a different stage in his or her
career. Their backgrounds are also different. Yet most of them have something
in common: they came to archaeology fortuitously, by chance, as it were. This
is hardly surprising, since the practice of archaeology is not a major profession,
such as medicine, law, or retail selling. But each of them, by some means,
caught the bug. That bug, that fascination with the human past, is what drives
them. The joy they express is not simply discovering and uncovering objects
that have lain hidden for thousands of years. It is the pleasure of making sense
of the data, making sense of the past.
Two of these archaeologists work in countries (Thailand and South Africa)
outside of the transatlantic axis, between Europe and the United States,
which was so significant in the early development of archaeology. It may
be relevant that each did his or her postgraduate training at centers within
that axis (Michigan and London respectively). Yet each now teaches graduate
students in their own country—students who will themselves become the
new generation of researchers, developing a world archaeology that will be
fully international.
Part of that internationalism is indeed the rich experience of working in
places and with people who lie outside of one’s previous existence. Many of
us are born and brought up in cities, so that archaeological fieldwork brings
a welcome first experience of living and working with hunter-gatherers or with
rural farmers in an environment very different from that of a city or university.
Each of the archaeologists is also concerned with the present and with
the future, and aspires to make a difference to that future. Lisa J. Lucero
hopes that her work on the demise of the Classic Maya, apparently through
long-term drought, can inform our current understanding of the impact of
climate change. Each sees it as part of their job both to interact with scholars
in other countries, and to communicate with a wider public in his or her own
homeland. The archaeologist of today, as of yesterday, is a person of wide
horizons, with knowledge of the human past, and with a concern for the
human future.
Building a Career in Archaeology 331

Lisa J. Lucero: University Professor, USA
hoW i WAs insPireD to Become An ArchAeologist. Even at high school

I always wanted to know how much of a movie or book supposedly based
on history was based on fact. This interest led me to obtain an anthropology
degree at Colorado State University. I attended graduate school at UCLA,
where the atmosphere in the archaeology program was positively electric.
My interest—encouraged by my peers and professors—was to explore the
foundation of political power. In the case of the Classic Maya (c. 250–900 ce)
the power of rulers rested on the labor of the majority: commoners and
farmers. The only way to reveal their story is to excavate commoner houses,
which I have done over the years. It is amazing to peel back the layers of Maya
mounds representing centuries of habitation and rebuilding by Maya families.
hoW i got my first JoB. It took a few interviews before I was offered my
first job at New Mexico State University, where I stayed for ten years, until
I was recruited by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I truly enjoy
the academic atmosphere—I must, since I have never been out of it! I spend
most of my time on various research projects as well as teaching.
Lisa J. Lucero
University of Illinois at the most reWArDing thing i hAve DiscovereD. There is not one
Urbana-Champaign
Email: ljlucero@illinois.edu
particular thing that I have discovered in my more than twenty years of
conducting archaeology. What is rewarding are the questions I feel more and
more qualified to address about human societies, including my own. What
amazes me is the resilience of our species; we have overcome so much in our
history. People of the past, however, have also faced challenges that they could
Lisa J. Lucero excavating at the Maya center
not overcome. It is hugely valuable to identify those strategies of the past that
of Yalbac, in the jungles of central Belize. did not work, so as to avoid history repeating itself.
WhAt Do i reseArch AnD hoW cAn it mAke A Difference? In the last ten
years, I have been interested in how climate change—in this case, a long-term
drought—played a role in the demise of the Classic Maya. In an area without
permanent surface water, large and powerful centers relied on complex
reservoir systems to supply water during the annual dry season, but long-
term drought rapidly brought this to an end. Within several decades farmers
in the southern Maya lowlands went back to living in small communities,
or migrated in all directions. And this is where I can make a difference as an
archaeologist—applying lessons from the past to current problems resulting
from global climate change. I am involved in several organizations that bring
together scholars focusing on issues of climate change and sustainability
in the tropics. Our goals are twofold: avoid past missteps and highlight how
ancient societies practiced sustainable ways of living.

Rasmi Shoocongdej: University Professor, Thailand
hoW i WAs insPireD to Become An ArchAeologist. I initially thought

about journalism as a career choice, but then became interested in
archaeology. In my junior year at Silpakorn University, I wrote an article
on Thai cultural heritage for a student newsletter, helped establish an
archaeology club, and created a mobile exhibition on cultural heritage for
schools in rural areas. These activities constituted a crucial turning point in
my archaeological career: I was enjoying becoming a journalist of the past.
hoW i got my first JoB. In 1984, after working as a research assistant in

the Archaeology Division of the Fine Arts Department at Silpakorn, I went
to study at the University of Michigan; there was no graduate program in
anthropological or prehistoric archaeology in Thailand. While studying at
Michigan, I applied for a lectureship at Silpakorn University (one of the few
teaching positions in Thailand), and returned to Thailand in 1987 to begin
teaching archaeology.
WhAt Do i Do noW? I am currently Associate Professor of Archaeology

and Chair of the Department of Archaeology at Silpakorn University. I devote
Rasmi Shoocongdej
Silpakorn University much of my time to students, aiming to develop their awareness of cultural
Email: bangkokrasmi@su.ac.th
heritage and a sense of responsibility to society, and to public campaigns for
the conservation of Thai and other ethnic groups’ heritages in Thailand. I am
also engaged in a long-term project in highland Pang Mapha in northwestern
Thailand, which began in 1998.
Rasmi Shoocongdej presenting the

my reseArch interests. My research focuses on understanding hunter-
Pang Mapha project at a conference in
France in 2006. gatherer mobility organization, specifically of foragers of the late- to
post-Pleistocene period (c. 32,000–10,000 bp) in the western border area of
Thailand. Other interests include nationalism and archaeology, archaeology
and multi-ethnic education, looting, and archaeology and the arts. My field
experiences include projects in northern, western, central, and southern
Thailand; Cambodia; the southwestern United States; and southeastern Turkey.
the most reWArDing thing i hAve Done or DiscovereD. From the Pang
Mapha project, two discoveries are highly significant (particularly as there are
very few late Pleistocene sites currently known in Thailand): remains of the
two oldest Homo sapiens found in northern Thailand (c. 13,000–12,000 bp),
and the largest stone tool workshop in Thailand (c. 32,000–12,000 bp).
As I believe that the past can serve the present and the future, also
rewarding is the part of the Pang Mapha project that has involved
working closely with the local communities to help connect them to their

archaeological heritage, such as through art-related activities to present the
history, beliefs, and meanings of the coffins that are still on site.
Why Being An ArchAeologist mAtters to me AnD hoW i mAke A

Difference. I believe in searching for the truth of humankind, so I am
fulfilling my dream to be a journalist of the past by doing archaeology. My
search for indigenous and local archaeological knowledge and appropriate
methodologies will enable me to develop an archaeology in my country that
can contribute to “world archaeologies.” I also hope that my work on heritage
management with local communities will increase cooperation in fighting
against the illegal antiquities trade and the destruction of archaeological sites.
Douglas C. Comer: CRM Archaeologist, USA
hoW i WAs insPireD to Become An ArchAeologist. I knew early on that

Douglas C. Comer
Cultural Site Research and Management, I would be a scientist, and I was inspired to become an archaeologist not
Baltimore
Email: dcomer@culturalsite.com
because of any strong interest in artifacts or history, but because I had a need
Website: www.culturalsite.com to understand how I might be connected to other humans. In an anthropology
course at Grand Valley State University, I was introduced to the work of
Leslie White. He had huge ideas: culture was an extrasomatic adaptation to
the environment; life was the process that counteracted the Second Law of
Thermodynamics. He argued that these basic processes would be quantified as
the field matured. To me, this suggested that by analyzing data, we would be
able to isolate the factors that made us who we were.
hoW i got my first JoB. As I finished my master’s degree in anthropology,

the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 was being implemented in
earnest. I immediately found employment with the Colorado State Highway
Department, first doing salvage archaeology. I was then loaned to the Forest
Service to survey areas in the White River National Forest that were to be
timbered. I had the opportunity to analyze and write up the results of some
of these surveys, and on the strength of that found permanent employment
with the National Park Service.
WhAt Do i Do noW? I now run a CRM consulting firm, Cultural Site Research
and Management (CSRM). I have always been convinced that the management
of cultural resources should be based in scientific research and analysis,
and in particular, in the collection of relevant data that can be quantified
Douglas C. Comer in the field in Jordan, and analyzed in replicable ways. And, being a nerd, I have enthusiastically
verifying the location of antiquities seen
in satellite imagery. embraced geospatial analysis technologies as they have emerged. CSRM has
been active in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, the United States, Africa, and
Central and South America.

my reseArch interests. My research interests revolve around the ways
in which humans utilize and structure space at all scales, including the
site and the landscape. I would like to refine further the use of aerial and
satellite remote-sensing technologies in archaeology and Cultural Resource
Management. We cannot hope to protect archaeological resources until we
know where they are.
the most reWArDing thing i hAve Done or DiscovereD. Truthfully,

everything that I have ever found on the ground or in aerial and satellite
imagery has been interesting to me, but I’m particularly interested in the sorts
of discoveries that suggest new avenues of research for archaeology.
Why Being An ArchAeologist mAtters to me AnD hoW i mAke A

Difference. We live in a time in which information is far more readily
available than at any time in the past. Yet while there is much more information
that purports to be relevant to why people behave as they do, it has become
increasingly difficult to differentiate fact from fantasy. Archaeology draws
upon a reliable tradition of scholarship that includes rigorous documentation
and verification procedures. As anthropologists, we know that human groups
define themselves and set a course for the future by means of an imagined
past. Archaeology deals with the material evidence of the past and a scientific
analysis of it that can be used to bring our imaginings more in line with the
realities of the world, and so make us better able to cope with those realities.
It is intensely interesting and somewhat humbling to play a role in this.
Shadreck Chirikure: Archaeometallurgist, South Africa
hoW i WAs insPireD to Become An ArchAeologist. If I had been asked

fifteen years ago whether I wanted to become an archaeologist, I would
have said “no!” My dream was to work in the finance industry. I entered
into archaeology by pure chance. It all started with studying the degrees
of BA General and BA Special Honours in Archaeology at the University of
Zimbabwe between 1997 and 2001. We studied great civilizations, humanity’s
progress over time, and archaeology’s potential to unlock development in host
communities. In no time, I wanted to be part of this discipline that combined
the thrill of discovery with learning and solving community problems.
In 2001, I was awarded a joint English Heritage and Institute for
Archaeometallurgical Studies scholarship to study for an MA in Artifact
Studies at University College London. I was already imagining how much
I would have missed out if I had ended up in finance! At MA level, I started
working in archaeometallurgy on preindustrial metal production in Africa.
Generous grants enabled me to expand this research at PhD level.

hoW i got my first JoB. On graduating with a PhD in Archaeology in
Shadreck Chirikure
University of Cape Town 2005, I assumed a postdoctoral research position at the University of Cape
Email: Shadreck.Chirikure@uct.ac.za
Town’s Department of Archaeology, becoming a lecturer in 2007. My main
responsibilities include research, teaching, administration, and running the
Materials Laboratory, which is Africa’s only facility of its kind. The laboratory
is dedicated to the study of preindustrial technologies in Africa, such as
metalworking and ceramics. Our projects range from studying the technology
of metal production to understanding the social context of the technology.
I collaborate with leading researchers based overseas, and I have won awards
for research papers and participated in award-winning documentaries.
the most reWArDing thing i hAve Done or DiscovereD. The success of

my work in the Materials Laboratory led to my appointment as the head of a
team of international experts working on the conservation and protection of
the world-famous Oranjemund shipwreck discovered in Namibia in 2008. This
sixteenth-century shipwreck contained large amounts of treasure: 28 kg (60 lb)
of Spanish and Portuguese gold coins, 4 kg (9 lb) of Spanish and Portuguese
silver coins, 20 tons of copper ingots, 6 tons of unworked elephant ivory, and
many more artifacts together with the superstructure of the ship itself.
Why Being An ArchAeologist mAtters to me. From time to time, I write

Shadreck Chirikure in the Materials newspaper articles on archaeology and also feature on radio programs and
Laboratory at the University of Cape Town.
in magazines discussing topical issues and careers in archaeology. Being an
academic archaeologist allows me to contribute to national discourse through
heritage protection programs, research programs, community learning,
and heritage entrepreneurship projects.
Study Questions
1 What are some of the ways that humans damage or destroy

archaeological sites?
2 In the United States, what are the key pieces of legislation that relate
to archaeological protection, conservation, and mitigation?
3 What is Cultural Resource Management (CRM)? What percentage
of archaeological work in the USA can be considered CRM?
4 Why is the publication of archaeological information so important?
5 How is archaeology relevant to today’s world?

Summary
mAny nAtions Believe that it is the duty of the government to have policies with
regard to conservation, and these conservation laws often apply to archaeology.
Construction, agricultural intensification, tourism, and looting are all human activities
that damage or destroy sites.
Built on A strong legAl foundation, CRM or “applied archaeology” plays a

major role in American archaeology. When a project is located on federal land, uses
federal money, or needs a federal permit, the law requires that cultural resources
are identified, evaluated, and if they cannot be avoided, addressed accordingly
in an approved mitigation plan. A large number of private contract archaeology
firms employ the majority of archaeologists in the US. These firms are responsible
for meeting mitigation requirements, overseen by a lead agency and an SHPO.
Publication of final reports is required, but the variable quality and usually limited
dissemination of these reports remain a problem.
ArchAeologists hAve A Duty to report what they find. Since excavation is, to a
certain extent, destructive, published material is often the only record of what was
found at a site. Perhaps up to 60 percent of modern excavations remain unpublished
after ten years. Governments and professional organizations are taking a harsher
stance against archaeologists who do not publish and often will not grant digging
permits to those who have unpublished work. The Internet and the popular media
can help to fulfil one of the fundamental purposes of archaeology: to provide the
public with a better understanding of the past.
Further Reading
The following works are useful
introductions to heritage management:
Carman, J. 2002. Archaeology and Smith, L. & Waterton, E. 2009. Heritage,

Heritage: An Introduction. Communities and Archaeology.
Continuum: London. Duckworth: London.
King, T. F. 2005. Doing Archaeology: Sørensen, M. L. S. & Carman, J. 2009.
A Cultural Resource Management Heritage Studies: Methods and
Perspective. Left Coast Press: Approaches. Routledge: London.
Walnut Creek, CA. Tyler, N., Ligibel, T. J., & Tyler, I. 2009.
King, T. F. 2008. Cultural Resource Laws Historic Preservation: An Introduction
and Practice: An Introductory Guide to Its History, Principles and Practice
(3rd ed.). Altamira Press: Walnut (2nd ed.). W. W. Norton & Company:
Creek, CA. New York.
Sabloff, J. A. 2008. Archaeology Matters:
Action Archaeology in the Modern [See p. 345 for a list of useful websites]
World. Left Coast Press: Walnut
Creek, CA.

Glossary
(Terms in italics are defined elsewhere this technique is based on the fact that characterization The application
in the glossary) changes in the earth’s magnetic field of techniques of examination by
over time can be recorded in such which characteristic properties of the
absolute dating The determination of materials as baked clay structures constituent material of traded goods
age with reference to a specific timescale, (ovens, kilns, and hearths). can be identified, and thus their source
such as a fixed calendrical system; also of origin, e.g. thin-section analysis.
referred to as chronometric dating archaeozoology Sometimes referred
(cf. relative dating). to as zooarchaeology, this involves the chiefdom A term used to describe a
identification and analysis of faunal society that operates on the principle
aerial survey An important technique, species from archaeological sites, as of ranking, i.e. differential social status.
primarily employing aerial and satellite an aid to the reconstruction of human Different lineages are graded on a scale
imagery, used in the discovery and diets and to an understanding of the of prestige, calculated by how closely
recording of archaeological sites contemporary environment at the related one is to the chief. The chiefdom
(see also LIDAR and reconnaissance). time of deposition. generally has a permanent ritual and
ceremonial center, as well as being
alloying A technique that involves the artifact Any portable object used, characterized by local specialization
mixing of two or more metals to create modified, or made by humans, e.g. stone in crafts.
a new material, e.g. the fusion of copper tools, pottery, and metal weapons.
and tin to make bronze. classification The ordering of
assemblage A group of artifacts phenomena into groups or other
ALS (Airborne Laser Scanning) recurring together at a particular time classificatory schemes on the basis
See LIDAR. and place, and representing the sum of of shared attributes (see also type
human activities. and typology).
annealing In copper and bronze
metalworking, this refers to the repeated association The co-occurrence of cognitive archaeology The study of past
process of heating and hammering the an artifact with other archaeological ways of thought and symbolic structures
material to produce the desired shape. remains, usually in the same matrix. from material remains.
anthropology The study of humanity— attribute A minimal characteristic of cognitive map An interpretive
our physical characteristics as animals, an artifact such that it cannot be further framework of the world that, it is
and the unique non-biological subdivided; attributes commonly argued, exists in the human mind
characteristics we call culture. The studied include aspects of form, style, and affects actions and decisions as
subject is generally broken down decoration, color, and raw material. well as knowledge structures.
into three subdisciplines: biological (or
physical) anthropology, cultural (or social) Australopithecus A collective name for cognitive-processual approach
anthropology, and archaeology. the earliest known hominins emerging An alternative to the materialist
about 5 million years ago in East Africa. orientation of the functional-processual
archaeobotany See paleoethnobotany. approach, it is concerned with (1) the
band A term used to describe small- integration of the cognitive and symbolic
archaeological culture A constantly scale societies of hunter-gatherers, with other aspects of early societies;
recurring assemblage of artifacts assumed generally fewer than 100 people, and (2) the role of ideology as an active
to be representative of a particular set who move seasonally to exploit wild organizational force.
of behavioral activities carried out at (undomesticated) food resources.
a particular time and place (cf. culture). Kinship ties play an important part Computed Tomography (CT)
in social organization. scanning The method by which
archaeology A subdiscipline of scanners allow detailed internal views
anthropology involving the study of the bioarchaeology The study of human of bodies, such as mummies. The body
human past through its material remains. remains (but in Europe this term is is passed into the machine and images
sometimes applied to other kinds of of cross-sectional “slices” through the
archaeology of cult The study of organic remains, such as animal bones). body are produced.
the material indications of behavior
undertaken in response to religious biological anthropology A subdiscipline conjoining See refitting.
beliefs. of anthropology dealing with the study
of human biological or physical context An artifact’s context usually
archaeomagnetic dating Sometimes characteristics and their evolution. It is consists of its immediate matrix (the
referred to as paleomagnetic dating, also known as physical anthropology. material around it, e.g. gravel, clay, or
338 Glossary
sand), its provenience (horizontal and characteristics unique to a particular earth resistance survey A method
vertical position in the matrix), and its society (cf. archaeological culture). of subsurface detection that measures
association with other artifacts (with other changes in conductivity by passing an
archaeological remains, usually in the culture-historical approach electrical current through ground soils
same matrix). An approach to archaeological using a resistivity meter. These changes
interpretation that uses the procedure are generally caused by moisture
contract archaeology Archaeological of the traditional historian (including content, and in this way, buried features
research conducted under the terms emphasis on specific circumstances can be detected by differential retention
of federal or state legislation, often elaborated with rich detail, and of groundwater.
in advance of highway construction processes of induction).
or urban development, where the ecofacts Non-artifactual organic and
archaeologist is contracted to undertake deduction A process of reasoning by environmental remains that have
the necessary research. which more specific consequences are cultural relevance, e.g. faunal and floral
inferred by rigorous argument from material, as well as soils and sediments.
coprolites Fossilized feces; these more general propositions (cf. induction).
contain food residues that can be used electrolysis A standard cleaning process
to reconstruct diet and subsistence deep-sea cores Cores drilled from in archaeological conservation. Artifacts
activities. the sea bed that provide the most are placed in a chemical solution, and
coherent record of climatic changes by passing a weak current between
core A lithic artifact used as a blank from on a global scale. The cores contain them and a surrounding metal grill,
which other tools or flakes are made. shells of microscopic marine organisms the corrosive salts move from the
(foraminifera) laid down on the ocean cathode (object) to the anode (grill),
Critical Theory A theoretical approach floor through the continuous process removing any accumulated deposit
developed by the so-called “Frankfurt of sedimentation. Variations in the ratio and leaving the artifact clean.
School” of German social thinkers, which of two oxygen isotopes in the calcium
stresses that all knowledge is historical, carbonate of these shells give a sensitive electron spin resonance (ESR)
and in a sense biased communication; indicator of sea temperature at the time This technique enables trapped electrons
thus, all claims to “objective” knowledge the organisms were alive. within bone and shell fragments to
are illusory. be measured without the heating that
dendrochronology The study of thermoluminescence (TL) dating requires.
cultural anthropology A subdiscipline tree-ring patterns; annual variations As with TL dating, the number of trapped
of anthropology concerned with the in climatic conditions that produce electrons indicates the age of the
non-biological, behavioral aspects of differential growth can be used both specimen.
society, i.e. the social, linguistic, and as a measure of environmental change,
technological components underlying and as the basis for a chronology. environmental circumscription
human behavior. Two important An explanation for the origins of the
branches of cultural anthropology are diatom analysis A method of state propounded by Robert Carneiro
ethnography (the study of living cultures) environmental reconstruction based that emphasizes the fundamental role
and ethnology (which attempts to on plant microfossils. Diatoms are exerted by environmental constraints
compare cultures using ethnographic unicellular algae, whose silica cell walls and territorial limitations.
evidence). In Europe, it is referred to survive after the algae die, and they
as social anthropology. accumulate in large numbers at the ethnicity The existence of ethnic
bottom of rivers and lakes. Assemblages groups, including tribal groups. Though
cultural ecology A term devised directly reflect the composition of the these are difficult to recognize from
by Julian Steward to account for the water’s extinct floral communities, as the archaeological record, the study
dynamic relationship between human well as the water’s salinity, alkalinity, of language and linguistic boundaries
society and its environment, in which and nutrient status. shows that ethnic groups often correlate
culture is viewed as the primary adaptive with language areas.
mechanism. diffusionist explanation The theory
(popularized by V.G. Childe) that all ethnoarchaeology The study of
Cultural Resource Management aspects of civilization, from architecture contemporary cultures with a view
(CRM) The safeguarding of the to metalworking, diffused from the to understanding the behavioral
archaeological heritage through the Near East to Europe. relationships that underlie the
protection of sites and through salvage production of material culture.
archaeology, generally within the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) The
framework of legislation. material that carries the hereditary ethnography A subset of cultural
instructions (the “blueprint”) that anthropology concerned with the study
culture A term used by anthropologists determine the formation of all living of contemporary cultures through first-
when referring to the non-biological organisms. hand observation.
Glossary 339
evolution The process of growth and formation processes The processes “hominids,” which include not only
development generally accompanied affecting the way in which archaeological humans but also gorillas and chimps,
by increasing complexity. In biology, materials come to be buried, and and “hominoids,” which group these
this change is tied to Darwin’s concept their subsequent history afterward. along with gibbons and orangutans.
of natural selection as the basis of Cultural formation processes include
species survival. Darwin’s work laid the the deliberate or accidental activities of hunter-gatherers A collective term
foundations for the study of artifact humans; natural formation processes for the members of small-scale mobile
typology, pioneered by such scholars refer to the natural or environmental or semi-sedentary societies, whose
as Pitt-Rivers. events that govern burial and survival. subsistence is mainly focused on
hunting game, and gathering wild plants
evolutionary archaeology The idea that frequency seriation A relative dating and fruits; organizational structure is
the processes responsible for biological method that relies principally on based on bands with strong kinship ties.
evolution also drive culture change, i.e. the measuring changes in the proportional
application of Darwinian evolutionary abundance, or frequency, observed ice cores Borings taken from the Arctic
theory to the archaeological record. among finds (e.g. counts of tool types, and Antarctic polar ice caps, containing
or of ceramic fabrics). layers of compacted ice useful for
excavation The principal method of data reconstructing paleoenvironments
acquisition in archaeology, involving the functional-processual archaeology and as a method of absolute dating.
systematic uncovering of archaeological See processual archaeology.
remains through the removal of soil iconography An important component
deposits, and other material covering Geographic Information Systems of cognitive archaeology involving the
and accompanying them. (GIS) GIS are software-based systems study of artistic representations that
designed for the collection, organization, usually have an overt religious or
experimental archaeology The study storage, retrieval, analysis, and display ceremonial significance, e.g. individual
of past behavioral processes through of spatial and digital geographical data deities may be distinguished with a
experimental reconstruction under held in different “layers.” A GIS can also special characteristic, the sun with
carefully controlled scientific conditions. include other digital data. a sun goddess.
fall-off analysis The study of the way geomagnetic reversals An aspect of induction A method of reasoning in
in which quantities of traded items archaeomagnetism relevant to the which one proceeds by generalization
found in the archaeological record dating of the Lower Paleolithic, involving from a series of specific observations
decline as the distance from the source complete reversals in the Earth’s so as to derive general conclusions
increases. This may be plotted as a fall-off magnetic field. (cf. deduction).
curve, with quantities of material (y-axis)
plotted against distance from source ground survey The collective name for interaction sphere A regional or inter-
(x-axis). a wide variety of methods for identifying regional exchange system.
individual archaeological sites, including
feature A non-portable artifact, e.g. consultation of documentary sources, isotopic analysis An important source
hearths, architectural elements, or soil place-name evidence, local folklore, and of information for the reconstruction
stains. legend, but primarily actual fieldwork. of prehistoric diets, this technique
analyzes the ratios of the principal
fission-track dating A dating method half-life The time taken for half the isotopes preserved in human bone;
based on the operation of a radioactive quantity of a radioactive isotope in a the method “reads” the chemical
clock, the spontaneous fission of an sample to decay (see also radioactive decay). signatures left in the body by different
isotope of uranium present in a wide foods. Isotopic analysis is also used in
range of rocks and minerals. As with hand-axe A Paleolithic stone tool usually characterization studies.
potassium-argon dating, with which its made by modifying (chipping or flaking)
time range overlaps, the method gives a natural pebble. landscape archaeology The study of
useful dates from rocks adjacent to individual features, including settlements,
archaeological material. hoards Deliberately buried groups of seen as single components within the
valuables or prized possessions, often broader perspective of the patterning
flotation A method of screening in times of conflict or war, and that,for of human activity over a wide area.
(sieving) an excavated matrix in water one reason or another, have not been
so as to separate and recover small reclaimed. Metal hoards are a primary LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging)
ecofacts and artifacts. source of evidence for the Bronze Age A remote-sensing technique using
in Europe. the same principle as radar. Light is
fluxgate magnetometer A type of transmitted to a target, some of which
magnetometer used in subsurface detection, hominins The subfamily to which is reflected back to the instrument. The
producing a continuous reading. humans belong, as opposed to the time that the light takes to travel to the
340 Glossary
target and back is used to determine the Neolithic An Old World chronological Paleolithic The archaeological period
range to the target. period characterized by the development before c. 10,000 bce, characterized by the
of agriculture and, hence, an increasing earliest known stone tool manufacture.
lineage A group claiming descent from emphasis on sedentism.
a common ancestor. paleomagnetic dating See
Neolithic Revolution A term coined archaeomagnetic dating.
Marxist archaeology Based principally by V.G. Childe to describe the origin
on the writings of Karl Marx, this posits and consequences of farming, allowing palynology The study and analysis
a materialist model of societal change. the widespread development of settled of fossil pollen as an aid to the
Change within a society is seen as the village life. reconstruction of past vegetation
result of contradictions arising between and climates.
the forces of production (technology) New Archaeology A new approach
and the relations of production (social advocated in the 1960s that argued for physical anthropology See biological
organization). Such contradictions are an explicitly scientific framework of anthropology.
seen to emerge as a struggle between archaeological method and theory,
distinct social classes. with hypotheses rigorously tested, pollen analysis See palynology.
as the proper basis for explanation,
material culture The buildings, tools, rather than simply description postprocessual archaeology A
and other artifacts that constitute the (see also processual archaeology). range of approaches formulated in
material remains of former societies. reaction to the perceived limitations
non-site evidence See off-site evidence. of functional-processual archaeology. It
matrix The physical material within eschews generalization in favor of an
which artifacts are embedded or obsidian A volcanic glass, the ease of “individualizing” approach that is
supported, e.g. gravel, clay, or sand. working and characteristic hard flint-like influenced by structuralist archaeology,
edges of which allowed it to be used for Critical Theory, and neo-Marxist thought.
Mesolithic An Old World chronological the making of tools.
period beginning around 10,000 years ago, potassium-argon dating A method used
between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic. off-site evidence Data from a range of to date rocks up to thousands of millions
information, including scatters of such of years old, though it is restricted to
metallographic examination artifacts and features as plowmarks and volcanic material no more recent than c.
A technique used in the study of early field boundaries, that provide important 100,000 years old. One of the most widely
metallurgy involving the microscopic evidence about human exploitation used methods in the dating of early
examination of a polished section cut of the environment. hominid sites in Africa.
from an artifact, which has been etched
so as to reveal the metal structure. Oldowan industry The earliest toolkits, prehistory The period of human history
comprising flake and pebble tools, before the advent of writing.
microwear analysis The study of the used by hominins in the Olduvai Gorge,
patterns of wear or damage on the edge Tanzania. prestige goods A term used to designate
of stone tools, which provides valuable a limited range of exchange goods to
information on the way in which the open-area excavation The opening up of which a society ascribes high status or
tool was used. large horizontal areas for excavation, used value.
especially where single-period deposits
Midwestern Taxonomic System lie close to the surface as, for example, processual archaeology An approach
A framework devised by W.C. McKern with the remains of Native American or that stresses the dynamic relationship
to systematize sequences in the Great European Neolithic long houses. between social and economic aspects
Plains area of the United States, using the of culture and the environment as the
general principle of similarities between paleoentomology The study of basis for understanding the processes
artifact assemblages. insects from archaeological contexts. of culture change. It uses the scientific
The survival of insect exoskeletons, methodology of problem statement,
monocausal explanation Explanations which are quite resistant to hypothesis formulation, and subsequent
of culture change (e.g. for state origins) decomposition, is important in the testing. The earlier functional-processual
that lay stress on a single dominant reconstruction of paleoenvironments. approach has been contrasted with
explanatory factor or “prime mover.” the cognitive-processual approach, where
paleoethnobotany Also referred emphasis is placed on integrating
multivariate explanation Explanations to as archaeobotany, the recovery ideological and symbolic aspects.
of culture change (e.g. the origin of the and identification of plant remains
state) that, in contrast to monocausal from archaeological contexts, used in provenience The place of origin or
explanations, stress the interaction of reconstructing past environments (earliest) known history of something;
several factors operating simultaneously. and economies. also the horizontal and vertical position
Glossary 341
of an artifact, ecofact or feature within or forces that transcend the everyday simple random sampling A type of
a matrix. material world. sampling where the areas to be sampled
are chosen using a table of random
pseudoarchaeology The use of remote sensing The imaging of numbers. Drawbacks include (1) defining
selective archaeological evidence to put phenomena from a distance, primarily the site’s boundaries initially; and (2) the
forward nonscientific, fictional accounts through airborne and satellite imaging. nature of random number tables results
of the past. “Ground-based remote sensing” links in some areas being allotted clusters of
geophysical methods, such as radar, sample squares, while others remain
pyrotechnology The intentional use with remote sensing methods applied untouched.
and control of fire by humans. at ground level.
site A distinct spatial clustering of
radioactive decay The regular process rescue archaeology See salvage artifacts, features, structures, and organic
by which radioactive isotopes break archaeology. and environmental remains—the residue
down into their decay products with of human activity.
a half-life that is specific to the isotope research design The systematic
in question (see also radiocarbon dating). planning of archaeological research, social anthropology See cultural
usually including (1) the formulation anthropology.
radiocarbon dating An absolute dating of a strategy to resolve a particular
method that measures the decay of the question; (2) the collection and soil resistivity See earth resistance survey.
radioactive isotope of carbon (14C) in recording of evidence; (3) the processing
organic material (see also half-life). and analysis of these data and their state A social formation defined
interpretation; and (4) the publication by distinct territorial boundedness,
reciprocity A mode of exchange in of results. and characterized by strong central
which transactions take place between government in which the operation
individuals who are symmetrically resistivity meter See earth resistance of political power is sanctioned by
placed, i.e. they are exchanging survey. legitimate force. In cultural evolutionist
as equals, with neither being in a models, it ranks second only to the
dominant position. salvage archaeology Also referred to empire as the most complex societal
as rescue archaeology, the location and development stage.
reconnaissance A broad range of recording (usually through excavation)
techniques involved in the location of of archaeological sites in advance of stela A free-standing carved stone
archaeological sites, e.g. the recording highway construction, drainage projects, monument.
of surface artifacts and features, and or urban development.
the sampling of natural and mineral step-trenching An excavation method
resources. segmentary societies Relatively small used on very deep sites, such as at Near
and autonomous groups, usually of Eastern tells, in which the excavation
redistribution A mode of exchange agriculturalists, who regulate their proceeds downward in a series of
that implies the operation of some own affairs; in some cases, they may gradually narrowing steps.
central organizing authority. Goods are join together with other comparable
received or appropriated by the central segmentary societies to form a larger stratification The laying down or
authority, and subsequently some of ethnic unit. deposition of strata or layers (also
them are sent by that authority to other called deposits) one above the other.
locations. seriation A relative dating technique A succession of layers should provide
based on the chronological ordering of a relative chronological sequence, with
refitting Sometimes referred to as a group of artifacts or assemblages, where the earliest at the bottom and the latest
conjoining, this entails attempting the most similar are placed adjacent at the top.
to put stone tools and flakes back to each other in the series (see also
together again, and provides important frequency seriation). stratified random sampling A form
information on the processes involved of sampling in which the region or site
in the knapper’s craft. side-scan sonar A survey method is divided into natural zones or strata,
used in underwater survey that provides such as cultivated land and forest; units
relative dating The determination the broadest view of the sea-floor. are then chosen by a random number
of chronological sequence without An acoustic emitter is towed behind procedure so as to give each zone a
recourse to a fixed time scale, e.g. the a vessel and sends out sound waves number of squares proportional to its
arrangement of artifacts in a typological in a fan-shaped beam. These pulses area, thus overcoming the inherent bias
sequence, or seriation (cf. absolute dating). of sonic energy are reflected back to a in simple random sampling.
transducer—the return time depending
religion A framework of beliefs relating on thedistance traveled—and recorded stratified systematic sampling A form
to supernatural or superhuman beings, on a rotating drum. of sampling that combines elements
342 Glossary
of (1) simple random sampling, (2) stratified systematic sampling A form of tribes A term used to describe a social
random sampling, and (3) systematic sampling employing a grid of equally grouping generally larger than a band,
sampling, in an effort to reduce bias. spaced locations; e.g. selecting every but rarely numbering more than a
other square. This method of regular few thousand; unlike bands, tribes are
stratigraphy The study and validation spacing runs the risk of missing (or usually settled farmers, though they also
of stratification: the analysis in the hitting) every single example if the include nomadic pastoral groups whose
vertical, time dimension, of a series distribution itself is regularly spaced. economy is based on the exploitation of
of layers in the horizontal, space livestock. Individual communities tend
dimension. It is often used as a relative taphonomy The study of processes that to be integrated into the larger society
dating technique to assess the temporal have affected organic materials, such through kinship ties.
sequence of artifact deposition. as bone after death; it also involves the
microscopic analysis of tooth marks type A class of artifacts defined by the
structuralist archaeology or cutmarks to assess the effects of consistent clustering of attributes.
An interpretation that stresses that butchery or scavenging activities.
human actions are guided by beliefs and typology The systematic organization
symbolic concepts, and that underlying tell A Near Eastern term that refers to of artifacts into types on the basis of
these are structures of thought that find a mound site formed through successive shared attributes.
expression in various forms. The proper human occupation over a long timespan.
object of study is therefore to uncover underwater survey Geophysical
structures of thought and to study their temper Inclusions in pottery clay that act methods of underwater survey include
influence in shaping ideas in the minds as a filler to give the clay added strength (1) a proton magnetometer towed behind
of the human actors who created the and workability, and to counteract any a survey vessel, to detect iron and steel
archaeological record. cracking or shrinkage during firing. objects that distort the Earth’s magnetic
field; (2) side-scan sonar that transmits
style According to the art historian thermoluminescence (TL) dating sound waves in a fan-shaped beam
E.H. Gombrich, style is “any distinctive A technique that relies indirectly on to produce a graphic image of surface
and therefore recognizable way in radioactive decay, overlapping with features on the seabed; and (3) a sub-
which an act is performed and made.” radiocarbon dating in the time period bottom profiler that emits sound pulses
Archaeologists and anthropologists for which it is useful, but also has the that bounce back from buried features
have defined “stylistic areas” as units potential for dating earlier periods. It and objects.
representing shared ways of producing has much in common with electron spin
and decorating artifacts. resonance (ESR). uniformitarianism The principle
that the stratification of rocks is due to
subsurface detection The collective thin-section analysis A technique processes still going on in seas, rivers,
name for a variety of remote-sensing whereby microscopic thin sections are and lakes, i.e. that geologically ancient
techniques operating at ground level, cut from a stone object or potsherd and conditions were in essence similar to, or
and including both invasive and non- examined with a petrological microscope “uniform with,” those of our own time.
invasive techniques. to determine the source of the material.
uranium-series dating A dating method
surface survey There are two Three Age System A classification system based on the radioactive decay of isotopes
basic kinds that can be identified: devised by C.J. Thomsen for the sequence of uranium. It has proved particularly
unsystematic and systematic. The of technological periods (the Stone Age, useful for the period before 50,000 years
former involves field-walking, i.e. the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age) in ago, which lies outside the time range
scanning the ground along one’s path Old World prehistory. It established the of radiocarbon dating.
and recording the location of artifacts principle that by classifying artifacts, one
and surface features. Systematic survey could produce a chronological ordering. varves Fine layers of alluvium sediment
by comparison is less subjective and deposited in glacial lakes. Their annual
involves a grid system, such that the total station An optical, electronic deposition makes them a useful source
survey area is divided into sectors and instrument used in surveying and to of dating.
these are walked systematically, thus record excavations.
making the recording of finds ore Wheeler box-grid An excavation
accurate. trace-element analysis The use of technique developed by Sir Mortimer
chemical techniques for determining Wheeler that involves retaining intact
symbol The representation (by word the incidence of trace elements in rocks. baulks of earth between excavation grid
or visual image) of an idea or concept. These methods are widely used in the squares, so that different layers can
The capacity to use symbols is a defining identification of raw material sources be correlated across the site in vertical
aspect of human cognition. for the production of stone tools. profiles.
systematic survey See surface survey. tree-ring dating See dendrochronology. zooarchaeology See archaeozoology.
Glossary 343
Illustration Credits
Abbreviations: a=above, b=below, l=left, c=center, r=right History Press/Doubleday & Co., New York 1967); 107 Design (after Bass); 229 George Bass/Cemal Pulak,
captureandcompose/Shutterstock.com; 111 Wheeler, Institute of Nautical Archaeology, Texas; 232 Tim
(Unless otherwise indicated, coloring of illustrations Ancient India, 3 Jan. 1947; 112 Annick Boothe; 113 Annick Graham/Alamy; 233 Jonathan Blair/Corbis; 234 Annick
for this edition was undertaken by Drazen Tomic and Ben Boothe (after Rathje & Schiffer, Archaeology 1982, fig. 4.17); Boothe; 235al Archäologisches Landesmuseum, Schloss
Plumridge.) 114l ML Design; 114r Kevin Fleming/Corbis; 115 E.R. Gottorf, Schleswig; 235ar Çatalhöyük Research Project,
Degginger/Science Photo Library; 118 Corpus of Maya Cambridge; 235bl The Sutton Hoo Society; 236, 237
10 St. Louis Art Museum, Eliza McMillan Fund; Hieroglyphic Inscriptions and Gordon R. Willey Forhistorisk Museum, Moesgård; 238a Annick Boothe
12a Museum of London Archaeology Service; 12bl Laboratory for Mesoamerican Studies, Peabody Museum (after Brothwell 1981, fig. 3.4); 238b Tracy Wellman (after
Çatalhöyük Research Project, Cambridge; 12br David of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University; 120 Houghton 1980); 240cl British Museum, London; 240bl
Anderson; 13a Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation, photo Michael Worthington, Oxford Tree-Ring Laboratory; 121 Antti Korpisaari; 240bc Elizabeth Daynès/National
Christophe Gerigk; 13bl Johan Reinhard; 13cr Kenneth Simon S.S. Driver (information from Bannister & Smiley Geographic Image Collection; 240br Griffith Institute,
Garrett; 13br Sergio Azenha/Alamy; 17 O. Louis in Geochronology, Tucson 1955); 123 Annick Boothe (123bl Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; 241 British Museum,
Mazzatenta/National Geographic/Getty Images; 19a after Hedges & Gowlett in Scientific American 254 (1), Jan. London; 242 Jacopin/Science Photo Library; 245 Oriental
Wiltshire Heritage Museum, Devizes; 19b Private 1986, p. 84); 124 Annick Boothe; 126–27 Courtesy Tom Institute, University of Chicago; 246a Illustration Aman
Collection/Archives Charmet/Bridgeman Art Library; Higham; 128 David Hurst Thomas & the American Phull © Thames & Hudson Ltd., London; 246b Gavin
21 F. Catherwood, Views of Ancient Monuments in Central Museum of Natural History; 129 P. Deliss/Godong/Corbis; Fogg/AFP/Getty Images; 247l 3LH/SuperStock; 247r Justin
America, Chiapas and Yucatán, London 1844; 22a A. Pitt- 130 Dr Andrew Carter; 131 Javier Trueba/Madrid Scientific Tallis/AFP/Getty Images; 248 Photo Services des
Rivers, Excavations in Cranborne Chase, 1893–1898; 23a Petrie Films; 134 Drazen Tomic (adapted from Stringer & Antiquités de l’Egypte; 250 Javier Trueba/MSF/Science
Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University of London; Andrews 2011, pp. 12–13); 135a Brett Eloff courtesy Lee Photo Library; 252, 256 Kenneth Garrett; 257a Wim
23br Archaeological Survey of India; 24ac Jericho R. Berger and the University of the Witwatersrand; 135b Lustenhouwer, VU University Amsterdam; 257b
Exploration Fund; 24cl Museo Nacional de Antropologia, John Sibbick; 136–37 Simon S.S. Driver (with amendments Reproduced by permission of Chris Henshilwood, African
Arqueologia e Historia, Lima, Peru; 24bl Courtesy the by Drazen Tomic); 139al Michael S. Yamashita/Corbis; Heritage Research Institute, Cape Town, South Africa;
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 137ar Irmgard Groth Kimball; 139cl Photo Heidi Grassley 258bl Ministère de la culture et de la communication,
Harvard University; 25 The Royal Commission on Ancient © Thames & Hudson Ltd., London; 139cr Interfoto/Alamy; Direction régionale des affaires culturelles de Rhone-
and Historical Monuments of Scotland; 28 Ray Smith; 139bl Walter Wust; 142 Cameris/Shutterstock.com; 149 Alpes, Service régionale de l’archéologie; 258br
34bl Courtesy Mrs Mary Allsebrook, Oxford; 34bc The Annick Boothe (after Johnson 1972); 151 Tracy Wellman Anonymous/AP/PA Photos; 259ac Musée d’Archéologie
Council for British Archaeology; 34ar The Principal and (after Isaac); 152 Robert Foley; 153 From B. Fagan, In the Nationale, Saint-Germain-en-Laye; 259al, 259c Pablo Aries
Fellows of Newnham College, Cambridge; 35al University Beginning (6th ed.) 1988, fig. 16.4 (after Winter in Flannery and Sergey Lev; 259ar Natural History Museum, London;
of Colorado Museum of Natural History, Boulder; 35ac (ed.) 1976, fig. 2.17); 154a Courtesy Scott W. Hammerstedt; 259br G. Dagli Orti/DeAgostini/Diomedia; 261l Henry
Courtesy the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and 154b Courtesy James A. Brown; 155al Sam Noble, Chaplin/istockphoto.com; 261r Philip Winton; 263l
Ethnology, Harvard University; 35ar John Reader/Science Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, University of Annick Boothe; 263r Lucy Maw (after Mellaart); 264
Photo Library; 38 Drimi/Shutterstock.com; 40–41 ML Oklahoma; 155ar, 155b Werner Forman/Universal Images Annick Boothe (after O’Kelly); 266 British Museum,
Design (after A. Sherratt (ed.) Cambridge Encyclopedia of Group/Getty Images; 158 Charles Higham; 159 Dmitry London; 267 Musée des Antiquitiés Nationales, St.
Archaeology, 1980, fig. 20.5); 44 John Sibbick; 45 Sue Rukhlenko/istockphoto.com; 160a Simon S.S. Driver Germain-en-Laye; 269l Annick Boothe; 269ar Annick
Cawood; 46 Annick Boothe (adapted from W. Rathje (after Renfrew); 160b Jeremy Walker/Alamy; 161b Bryan Boothe (after Burger); 269b Museo de Chavin de Huantar,
& M. Schiffer, Archaeology 1982, fig. 4.11); 49 Fototeka Busovicki/istockphoto.com; 162 Paolo Matthiae; 163 Gary Ancash, Peru; 270, 271 DAI, Photo Nico Becker; 272 ML
Hrvatskoga restauratorskog zavoda and Robert Sténuit; Urton; 164a British Museum, London; 164bl Musée du Design; 273 Photo Scala, Florence; 276 E.Q. Roy/
52ar Sandro Vannini/Corbis; 52cl Egyptian Museum, Louvre, Paris; 165 Nigel Pavitt/JAI/Corbis; 166l Lewis Shutterstock.com; 280a Annick Boothe (after Kirch); 280b
Cairo; 52b Drazen Tomic (after Ian Bott); 53 After Binford; 166br Peter Johnson/Corbis; 168 John Milner Annick Boothe (after Gelb); 281c Colin Hoskins/Alamy;
Rudenko; 54a South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, Associates; 169 Chester Higgins; 170 Courtesy 281b ML Design (after Garlake); 283 akg-images; 290 Craig
Bolzano/Wolfgang Neeb/Bridgeman Art Library; 54b Landesdenkmalamt Baden-Württemberg-Archäologische Chiasson/istockphoto.com; 297 Sviluppo/Shutterstock.
Vienna Report Agency/Sygma/Corbis; 55 Drazen Tomic Denkmalpflege; 171l From Gimbutas 1974, p. 163, drawing com; 299a Courtesy Serbian Stamps Shop, Belgrade; 299b
(after Tracy Wellman); 56 Johan Reinhard; 57 Jada Images/ by Linda Mount-Williams; 171r Caroline Malone and Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism; 300a Jean-
Alamy; 58 Ruth Kirk; 59 National Museum of Ireland, Simon Stoddart (courtesy National Museum of Claude Chapon/AFP/Getty Images; 300b Saeed Khan/
Dublin; 62 Nick Card; 64 best-photo/istockphoto.com; Archaeology, Malta); 173l Musée du Pays Châtillonnais— AFP/Getty Images; 301 Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images;
65 Wolfgang Kaehler/Corbis; 69 Annick Boothe (after Trésor de Vix, Châtillon sur Seine, Côte d’Or, France; 173r 302 Robert Harding Picture Library/Alamy; 304 Hiroshi
Flannery (ed.) 1976); 70 Photos Shannon P. McPherron; The Art Archive/Alamy; 175 Jurate Buiviene/Shutterstock. Kasiwara; 305a British Museum, London; 305b Peter
71a Annick Boothe (after Connah & Jones, in Connah com; 178a Lucy Maw; 182l David Scharf/Science Photo Eastland/Alamy; 307 Paul Bahn; 308 Emmanuel Laurent/
1983, p. 77); 71b Timothy E. Black; 73a Annick Boothe (after Library; 182r Annick Boothe (after Scarre (ed.) 1988, p.107); Eurelios/Science Photo Library; 312 Antalya Museum
Oxford Archaeological Unit); 73b Rog Palmer; 75 Crown 183 Philip Winton (after Piperno and Ciochon, New and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; 313 By courtesy of
Copyright, Forestry Commission; 76a © Marty Sedluk; Scientist 10/11/90); 184 Philip Winton; 186 Janette Deacon; the Trustee of the Marquess of Northampton 1987
76b Courtesy John Weishampel, Caracol Archaeological 188 After A. Marshack, The Roots of Civilization 1972, fig. 78b; Settlement; 314 British Museum, London; 316 Andy
Project; 77l USGS; 78 Courtesy USGS and Jason Ur; 79 190 Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Myatt/Alamy; 318a National Museum, Baghdad; 318b
NASA; 80 Drazen Tomic (after Tracy Wellman); 81a © 2016 Sciences, Beijing; 193 Annick Boothe (after J. Greig, Plant Marc Deville/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images; 319 STR/AFP/
Ancient Egypt Research Associates. Photo Mark Lehner; Foods in the Past, J. of Plant Foods 5 1983, 179–214); 195 Getty Images; 322cl National Geographic Image
81b © 2016 Ancient Egypt Research Associates. After Mangelsdorf; 196 akg-images; 198a Pat Shipman Collection/Alamy; 322ar, 322br Courtesy Great Temple
Illustration Rebekah Miracle; 83a René Millon; 83b and Richard Potts; 198b Photo Curtis Marean © Dikika Project, Mexico City; 323 Eduardo Verdugo/AP/PA Photos;
OGphoto/istockphoto.com; 85 Mandy Mottram; 88 Research Project; 200–1 Thomas F. Kehoe; 203 British 326, 327 Courtesy Archaeological Consulting Services,
Courtesy Dean Goodman, Geophysical Archaeometry Museum, London; 206 After Vinther et al., Quaternary Ltd., Tempe, Arizona; 328al David Adamec; 328ar Kirill
Laboratory, University of Miami, Japan Division; 90a Science Reviews 29(3), 522–38; 208 County Museum, Trifonov/istockphoto.com; 328cl Jon Arnold Images/
Abingdon Archaeological Geophysics; 90b GSB, Bradford; Gotland; 210 Peter Bellwood; 211 Annick Boothe; 212a Alamy; 328cr Nickolay Stanev/istockphoto.com; 328bl
92 Drazen Tomic (after M. Carver, Underneath English Towns Drazen Tomic (after Bruce Bradley); 212b Béatrice Dmitry Rukhlenko/istockphoto.com; 328br Robert
1987, fig. 2); 94–95 Photos Jamestown Rediscovery, Schmider; 214a Ingenui/istockphoto.com; 216 Erich Harding Picture Library/Alamy; 332 Courtesy Lisa J.
courtesy William M. Kelso; 97l Robin Coningham; Lessing/akg-images; 218 Kenneth Garrett; 219al Lucero; 333 Courtesy Rasmi Shoocongdej; 334 Courtesy
97r Center for American Archaeology, Kampsville Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; 219ar Palace Douglas C. Comer; 336 Courtesy Shadreck Chirikure.
Archaeological Center; 98 Museum of London Museum, Beijing; 219cl British Museum, London; 219cr
Archaeology Service; 99 Images courtesy Jeroen de Reu, Zaraysk Kremlin Museum, Moscow; 219bl Ohio Historical All locator maps: Ben Plumridge © Thames & Hudson
Department of Archaeology, Ghent University; 100 Chris Society, Columbus; 219bc Werner Forman Archive; 219br Ltd, London.
Ratcliffe/Getty Images; 101a Annick Boothe (after The National Archaeological Museum, Athens; 223l ML
Courier, Unesco Nov. 1987, p. 16, drawing by M. Redknap); Design (after Peacock 1982, fig. 80); 225 ML Design (after Text credits
101b Annick Boothe (after National Geographic, supplement Renfrew); 227 Annick Boothe (after Pires-Ferreira in The following serves as an extension of the information
Jan. 1990); 102 Courtesy Robert Grenier; 104 Annick Flannery (ed.) 1976, fig. 10.16); 228a George Bass/Cemal on page 4. The textual contributions below are copyright
Boothe (after J. Deetz, Invitation to Archaeology, Natural Pulak, Institute of Nautical Archaeology, Texas; 228b ML © Thames & Hudson Ltd, London: pp. 94–95 and 331–36.
344 Illustration Credits

Useful Websites
Wikipedia archaeology portal Magazines:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Archaeology Archaeology
Archaeology newsletter: Explorator http://www.archaeology.org/
https://groups.yahoo.com/group/Explorator/ Online journal finder
http://journalseek.net/
Organizations and Societies:
Archaeological Institute of America Other:
http://www.archaeological.org/ The Archaeology Channel
Canadian Archaeological Association http://www.archaeologychannel.org/
http://www.canadianarchaeology.com/ Human evolution
Society for American Archaeology http://humanorigins.si.edu/
http://www.saa.org/ http://www.talkorigins.org/
American Anthropological Association Egyptology
http://www.aaanet.org/ http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt//
Society for Historical Archaeology Aboriginal Studies
http://www.sha.org/ http://www.ciolek.com/WWWVL-Aboriginal.html
Biblical Archaeology Society Mesoamerican Archaeology
https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/ http://www.famsi.org
Association for Environmental Archaeology Center for Archaeoastronomy
http://www.envarch.net/ http://www.wam.umd.edu/~tlaloc/archastro/
World Archaeological Congress European Megalithic Monuments
http://www.worldarchaeologicalcongress.org/ http://www.stonepages.com/
Society for Archaeological Sciences
http://www.socarchsci.org/
American Schools of Oriental Research
http://www.asor.org/
Index
Page numbers in italics refer to age determination 233, 236–39, 238, Ampato volcano 13, 56 323; lions 259, 270; mammoths
information contained in captions 240–41, 244 amphorae 194, 223, 223, 224, 226, 228 184, 199, 256, 258, 258, 259; pigs
and illustrations. agency 294–95 AMS (accelerator mass 81, 199, 218, 236, 270, 271, 271;
agglomerate structures 146 spectrometry) 125, 129 reindeer 189; reptiles 204;
3D modeling 97–100, 99, 100 agriculture 192, 195, 286; and Anatolia 171, 224–25, 225, 244 rhinoceroses 258, 259; snakes
archaeological damage 317, 318; ancestors 58, 301, 307, 308; worship 270, 272; spiders 270; whales 58;
accelerator mass spectrometry intensification of 287, 317, 318; of 172, 271 woolly rhinoceroses 49–50, 189
(AMS) 125, 129 Maya 76; see also farming Ancestral Pueblo sites 250 animals: cave paintings of
acidic conditions 49, 57, 59, 235 Aguadulce Shelter 194 Ancient Monuments Protection 258–59, 258, 260; diet of
Acropolis 306 Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) 73 Act 320 197–202; domestication of
Adams, Richard 76 Akbar 328 Andeans 214, 265 138, 199, 201–2; fibers of 213,
Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Akhenaten 265 Andes 53, 56, 56, 177 214; human exploitation
Emission and Reflection Akkadian (Babylonian) language androcentrism (male bias) 32, 170 of 197–99; macrofauna 187,
Radiometer (ASTER) 79 162, 164, 164 Angkor 79, 79, 265 188–89; macroremains of
Advisory Council on Historic Aleutian Islands 53 Anglo-Saxons 248 199; microfauna 187–88;
Preservation 325 Alexander the Great 117–18, 299 animal species: asses 270; aurochs reconstructing the environment
Aegean 115, 140, 172, 222, 223 Alexandria 13 270; bears 258; birds 203, 204, of 186–89; remains of 176, 177,
aerial photography 70–79, 71, Ali Kosh 225, 225 270, 272, 281, 283; bison 219, 258; 185–86, 197–202, 213, 214; wild
86, 320; oblique 71–72, 71; alkali-metal vapor magnetometer buffaloes 186; camels 202; cats 201–2, 270
stereoscopic 71–72; vertical 90 201, 258, 259; cattle 201, 202, 270; Annapolis 291–92
71–72, 71, 74 alkaline conditions 50 caymans 272; chimpanzees 255; Anne of York 247
aerial survey 64, 65, 70–79, 80 alloying 216–17, 265 deer 199, 258, 270; dogs 199, 201; annealing 217
Afghanistan 77, 327, 328 Alps 11, 53, 54 ducks 203; eagles 272; elephants annual cycles 119–22
Africa 20, 43, 67; East 35, 116, 129, ALS (Airborne Laser Scanning) 73 189, 218, 228, 336; fish 81, 187, 190, Antarctica 115, 177, 178, 179
134–35, 197; “Out of Africa” Altamira 260 202, 203, 204, 248, 283; foxes 270; anthropology 11–14, 26, 301; and
dispersal 134, 135–38, 136; sub- Alva, Walter 311 gazelles 270; giant horses 186; archaeology 25; biological 14, 33,
Saharan 243; see also South Africa Amboseli region 151 goats 81, 138, 201; grasshoppers 245, 301; cultural 14, 143; forensic
African Burial Ground, New York American Antiquities Act 321 188; hartebeest 186; horses 53, 245; linguistic 14; and society
168–69, 169 American Southwest 51, 72, 112, 113, 186, 202, 258; ibex 258; insects 144–45
Agamemnon 215 120–22, 146, 250, 261, 279, 310, 311 188, 188, 204, 270; jaguars 272, 322, antlers 199, 201, 213, 214, 259
Useful Websites and Index 345

Anzick burial site 244 208–31; attributes of 103–4, Binford, Lewis 28, 28, 165, 166, mounds 53, 59; burial practices
applied archaeology 65, 66, 96, 104; and burial analysis 157–58; 282–83 249–50; Clovis 244; and cognitive
324–25; see also Cultural characterization of 220–22; bioarchaeology 232–51 archaeology 256, 256; and
Resource Management cleaning of 103; dating of 25, biological anthropology 14, 33, cultural formation processes 46,
“Arab Spring” 319 112–13, 118–19; distribution 245, 301 47; dry preservation of 51–53, 52;
Arch of Triumph 100, 300 of 222–30, 223; excavation of bison drive sites 200–201, 201 excavation issues with 306–8;
archaeobotany see 92, 94–95; function of 209, Black Patch 191 and gender 172–73, 173; horse
paleoethnobotany 213; manufacture of 209, Black Sea 222 53; mass 170, 170, 245; Princess
Archaeological Conservancy 310 210–13; plant residues on Blackfoot tribe 200 of Vix 172–73, 173; and social
archaeological culture 104–5, 104 192, 193–94; prestige 218–19, blades 212, 255 organization 154–55; see also
archaeology: African-American 267; raw materials used in Blanton, Richard 294 barrows; tombs
169; applied 65, 66, 96, 324–25; 209–17; and settlement analysis Blombos Cave 257, 257 burning 47–48, 199, 201, 249; see also
beginnings of modern 18–25; 150–52, 151, 152, 154–55; and blood: groups 241; residues 103 charring
biblical 14, 65; careers in 331–36; site surface survey 82–85; and Bloomberg Excavation 98, 98 butchery techniques 200–201,
Classical 14; cognitive 252–75, synthetic materials 210, 214–17, Boarding School site 200–201 249, 250
278, 292–94; contract 329; of cult 218; typology of 28, 104; and Boas, Franz 25 Butler, Ann 195
267–68, 271–72; definition of 14; unaltered materials 210–14; see boats 214; burials of 52, 59,
discipline of 11–16; ethics of 298, also assemblages; grave-goods 86–87, 214 CAD (computer-aided design) 79, 81
301–2; and ethnography 20–21; ash 17, 43, 51, 162, 183, 233 bogs 57–59, 60, 115–16, 182; bodies Cairo Museum 319
evolutionary 284; experimental assemblages (of artifacts) 25, buried in 59, 59, 116, 184, 203, Calendar Stone 322
45, 212, 214; feminist 32–33, 104, 104, 105; bone 188, 199; 235–37, 235, 236, 237, 239, 245 calendars 116–19, 263; Maya 118
34–35, 170–71; forensic 245; fraud migrationist/diffusionist bones 153, 180, 188–89, 197, 311; calibration curve 126, 127, 127
in 302, 303–4; fringe (alternative) explanations of 278; seriation and age assessment 238, 238; Cambodia 265
289, 302–3; functional- of 113–14 bird 187; and bison drive sites Canada 201, 201
processual 288, 292, 293; future association 42, 110, 113 200–201; and cannibalism 249, Cango Valley 186
of 316–37; hermeneutic 31; ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne 250; carved 259; charred/burnt Cann, Rebecca 242–43
history of 10–37; of identity Thermal Emission and 200, 249; charting discarded 165, cannibalism 249–50, 250
167–73, 298–300, 301; and Reflection Radiometer) 79 166; clavicle (collar bone) 238; Cape Gelidonya, Turkey 226
ideology 300; indigenous Atapuerca 130, 131, 131, 249 collagen in 202, 205; deducing Caracol, Belize 75, 76
35–36; of the individual 167–73; Athens 273–74, 300 age from 199, 200; deducing carbon isotopes 180, 206, 206, 249;
landscape 82, 260–61; Marxist attributes 103–4, 104; and dating seasonality from 199–201; carbon-14 (14C) 123, 123, 124–25,
277, 283–84, 289; neo-Marxist 112–13; shape 103, 112, 113; surface deducing sex from 199, 200; and 126, 129
31; popular 303–5; post- 103, 112, 113; technological 103 diet 189, 190–91; and disease and Carnac 261
positivist 31; postprocessual Australian Aborigines 298–99, 301, deformity 247; DNA extraction Carnarvon, Lord 52
(interpretive) 30–32, 278, 303, 308–9 from 243; femur (thigh bone) Carneiro, Robert 287–88
288–92, 293–94; praxis approach Australian Archaeological 238; fish 187, 190, 204; fragments Carter, Howard 52
to 31; processual 28–29, Association (AAA) 309 of 150, 151, 204, 233, 236, 238, 238; carvings 58, 259, 259, 270, 272
277–78, 282–84, 291, 292; and australopithecines 134, 135, 238 fusing of 238, 238; human 134, casting 217
the public 33, 297–315; salvage Australopithecus 130, 134; africanus 155, 157, 169, 177, 189, 233; human Çatalhöyük 12, 30, 172, 235, 263,
(rescue/preventive) 33, 323; 205; sediba 77, 135 processing of 199, 201; and 263, 264
social 141–74; speculative axes 112, 327; Acheulian 135, 138, 211, malnutrition 248–49; Paleolithic Catherwood, Frederick 21, 21
phase of 16–18; structuralist 212, 213, 255; bronze 112; copper 44–45, 44; and sexing 235; Caton-Thompson, Gertrude 34,
278, 289; underwater 13, 55, 154; gold-covered 267; hand- toolmarks on 197–99, 198; whale 34, 281
100–102, 101, 177–79; urban axes 113, 135, 138, 211, 212, 213, 255, 58; see also skeletons causation 285–88
12; see also bioarchaeology; 304; stone 112, 221 Boomplaas Cave 185–86 causewayed camps 159, 160, 160
ethnoarchaeology; New Aztecs 16, 140, 196, 212, 218, 219, 322 Borobudur 328 cave art (parietal art) 189, 258–59,
Archaeology Boserup, Ester 287 258, 260
archaeomagnetic dating 131, Babylon 163–64, 164, 196 Boston Museum of Fine Arts 312 caves 50, 53, 150, 179, 182, 203, 204
133, 178 backfilling 94, 95 bottom-up approaches 167 Celts 21
archaeometallurgy 216 Baku 327 Boudelo-2 site 99, 99 cemeteries 51, 90, 113–14, 114, 157–58,
archaeozoology (zooarchaeology) Balkans 32 British Museum 305, 306 239, 266–67, 267
190 Balzi Rossi caves 259 Britons 21 Central America 138, 139, 140,
Arctic 115 Bam 327 Bromage, Tim 238 311, 334
Ardipithecus 134 Bamiyan Buddhas 300, 300, 327 bronze 49, 49, 216–17, 228, 229, Central Phoenix/East Valley Light
area survey 71 bands 144–45, 147, 149–51, 229–30 265, 273 Rail corridor 326–27, 326
Arens, William 249 Bantu 281 Bronze Age 20, 57, 57, 59, 68, 78, 84, Cerén 51, 191
Argentina 139 Baringo, Lake 165, 165 171, 183, 191, 216, 222–23, 226, 229, cereals 21, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 195,
argon-40 (40Ar) 129 barrows 22, 59, 90; long 159–60, 160 265, 279, 304 196, 203, 282
Arikamedu 23 basketry 25, 39, 51, 56, 58, 58, 154, 214 Brown, James A. 154 Chaco Canyon 72, 261, 279
Armenia 225 Bass, George 101, 226, 228, 229 Buddha 300, 300, 327, 328 Champollion, Jean-François 21
Arnold, Bettina 172–73 battleship curves 113, 114 burials 60, 148, 161–62, 235; characterization 220–22, 224
art 186, 189, 195, 196, 214, 228, 234, Belize 75, 76, 179 African-American 168–69; Charavines 59
239, 248; Ice Age portable 259, Berlin Museum 306 analysis of 150, 157–58, 158; charcoal 111, 124, 125, 128, 181,
259; and representation 257; see Betatakin 122 and archaeological ethics 185–86, 204
also carvings; cave art; reliefs Bible 14, 16, 65 301–2; Australian Aboriginal charring 191, 193, 195, 200; see also
artifacts 14, 20, 40, 41, 42, biblical archaeology 14, 65 309; boat 52, 59, 86–87, 214; burial burning
346 Index
Chase, Arlen 75 context 42–43, 128, 192; primary 43, 108–9; optically stimulated Earle, Timothy 294
Chase, Diane 75 91; secondary 43 luminescence 133; potassium- Early Dynastic settlements (Egypt)
Chauvet Cave 258, 259, 260 cooking 40, 105, 190, 190, 192, 195, argon 116, 129–30, 131, 149, 149
Chavín: civilization 140; Chavín de 196, 203, 204, 205, 215 133; relative 108, 110–16; Earth Observing System (EOS) 79
Huantar 267, 269, 272 Copan 118, 290 thermoluminescence 132–33; earth resistance survey 88–89
chemical analysis 192, 193–94 copper 49, 154, 216, 218, 219, 222, 228 tree-ring 59–60, 116, 120–22, earthworks 21, 45, 45, 71, 74, 75, 89
chiefdoms 140, 145, 146, 147, 153, Copper Age 171 120, 121; uranium-series 115, East Africa 35, 116, 129, 134–35, 197
155, 160 coprolites 203–4 116, 126, 130, 131, 178; and world Easter Island 210, 210
Childe, Vere Gordon 25–26, 25 Corded Ware culture 244 chronology 134–40; see also Eastern Woodlands 195
children 235, 237, 244, 256, 282 cores 210–12 radiocarbon dating Ebla 162, 162
Chile 51 CORONA satellite 77–78, 77, 78 de Cardi, Beatrice 34, 34 ecofacts 40, 41, 42
Chimú 140 Cortés, Hernán 322 Dealing in Cultural Objects ecological approach 26–27
China 64, 138, 140, 162, 190, 202, 203, Cosa 223 (Offences) Act 312 ecology, cultural 26
210, 239, 286 cosmology 155, 261 Dean, Christopher 238 Egypt 21, 83, 140, 196, 196, 206, 214,
Chinchorro 51 Cosquer Cave 64, 259 death 233, 236, 237, 244–45, 244–47, 216, 228, 239, 248, 248, 286, 303,
Chios 194 Coyolxauhqui 322, 322 245, 247 306, 319; burial practices in 47,
Chirikure, Shadreck 335–36, 336 Crabtree, Donald 212, 213 deduction 18, 29 51–52, 52, 86–87, 202, 203, 214,
Chomsky, Noam 289 Craig Mound 154–55, 154 deep-sea cores 115–16, 115, 177–80, 214, 242, 245, 306; hieroglyphics
Christ 109, 129 Cranborne Chase 22, 22 178, 222 of 21; historical chronologies
Christianity 217, 300 creationism 16, 19 Deetz, James 30, 104 of 117–18, 119; literacy in 162,
chromatography 194 cremation 309 deformity 244–47, 245, 246; scoliosis 273; symbols of power in 265;
chronology 25, 27, 70, 107–41; Crete 156, 228, 229 246 town planning in 265; wooden
absolute 115, 116; historical Critical Theory 289–91, 292, 293 Deh Luran Plain 114 artifacts of 213–14, 214
116–19, 116; relative 111, 112, 113; CRM (Cultural Resource deities 267, 268, 271; see also El Salvador 39, 51, 191
world 134–40 Management) 66, 68, 86, goddesses; gods electrolysis 49
Chumash 307 324–27, 334–35; see also applied dendrochronology see tree-ring electromagnetic remote sensing
cities 147, 148, 149; capital 156 archaeology dating 87–88
Clark, Grahame 26–27 crop-marks 73, 74 Denisova Cave 243 electron spin resonance (ESR)
classification 20, 25–27, 103–5, 104 crops 46–47, 138–39, 193, 196, 196 Denisovans 243–44 130–31, 133
“classificatory-historical” period crutches, T-shaped 212, 213 Denmark 59, 203, 236, 239, 318 “Elgin Marbles” (Parthenon
25–27 CT (Computed Tomography) deoxyribonucleic acid see DNA; sculptures) 305–6, 305
clay 50, 88–89, 221, 258; baked scanning 245, 247 mitochondrial DNA empires 140, 144
89, 132, 133, 172; fired 193, 215; cult 267–68, 271–72 Determination of Eligibility (DOE) Enlène 188
sealings 223; tablets 48, 162, 162, cultural anthropology 14, 143 324 environment 175–89; global
163, 196 cultural change 284 Diakonoff, Igor 286 scale investigations of 177–80;
climate: fluctuations/change 49, 50, cultural ecology 26 diatoms 181, 221; analysis of 183–84, reconstruction of 180–89
115, 119–20, 176–80, 186–89, 331; Cultural Heritage Management 36 184 environmental circumscription
local 50; regional 50; temperate cultural property 305–6, 329 diet 51, 55, 175–77, 188, 189–206, 246, 287–88
50; tropical 50 Cultural Resource Management 247, 248–50; and animal remains environmental impact surveys
clothing 53; of the Iceman 55; (CRM) 66, 68, 86, 324–27, 334–35; 197–202; and human remains 329–30
prestige 219 see also applied archaeology 202–6; and nutrition 248–50; see environmental sequences 114–16
Clovis industry 244 culture 11, 20, 279; archaeological also food; meals EOS (Earth Observing System) 79
Coatlicue 322 104–5, 104 diffusionist explanation 217–20, Erebuni 77
coffins 52, 52, 59, 245 culture history 29 227–29, 277–78, 280 ESR (electron spin resonance)
cognitive archaeology 252–75, 278, culture process 29 Dikika 198 130–31, 133
292–94 culture-historical approach 26 “direct historical approach” 25 Ethiopia 181, 198, 328
cognitive maps 255 cuneiform 21, 164, 164, 196 disease 244–47; arthritis 11, 55, 202, ethnicity 167–70, 278–79, 300, 318
cognitive-processual approach 289 Cunningham, William 19 236, 240 ethnoarchaeology 12, 145, 148, 150,
coinage 162, 262; dating 118–19; Cussac Cave 258 distribution 222–30, 223 164–67, 165, 166, 169, 189, 192
gold 336; silver 222, 336 Cycladic islands 311 ditches 42, 45, 45, 73, 87–89, 90, 92, ethnography 20–21, 148, 164–65,
cold-hammering 217 Cyprus 68, 201, 225, 228, 229 94, 159, 160, 170, 286 213, 214
collectors 309–14, 329 DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) 27, Etruscans 140, 239–41, 241, 280;
Colorado 311 Dai, Marquis of 202, 203 56, 134, 135, 135, 169, 202, 237, tombs of 86, 311
Colt Hoare, Sir Richard 18, 19, 20 Danger Cave 51 242, 242, 243–44, 279, 308; Euphronios Krater 306, 312
Colville tribe 308 Danube Valley 146 plant 192, 194; see also evidence: categories of 40–43;
Comer, Douglas C. 334–35, 334 Darwin, Charles 19, 19, 20, 21; theory mitochondrial DNA collection and recording of 64;
Computed Tomography (CT) of 112, 284 DOE (Determination of Eligibility) destruction of 42–43, 47–48, 298,
scanning 245, 247 dating 107–41; absolute 108, 324 309, 311, 317–19; off-site/non-
computer-aided design (CAD) 79, 81 110–13, 115–40; accelerator domestication 199, 201–2, 282 site 63; processing and analysis
conflict 169–70, 283, 286, 292, mass spectrometry 125, 129; dominance 144, 149, 229 of 64; recovery and recording
299–300, 317, 318–19, 329 archaeomagnetic 131, 133, 178; Donnelly, Ignatius 303 of underwater 102–3, 177–79;
conjoining see refitting conventions of 109–10; electron Douglass, A.E. 120 variety of 38–61
Conkey, Margaret 32, 172 spin resonance 130–31, 133; Dreamtime 303 evolution 11, 19–20, 21, 112, 134–38,
Connecticut tombstones 114, 114 errors in 109, 118; fission-track Druids 302, 303 134, 284, 285
Conquistadors 218, 290, 322 130; geomagnetic reversals dryland sites 56 excavation 148; burial ethics and
conservation 302, 317, 319–24, 330–31 133; and measuring time Durango 51 306–8; of cave sites 150; in the
Index 347
digital age 97–100; early 17–18; 138; remains 190–96, 190; glass 218, 219, 222, 228, 229; see also Harris lines 248
of features 62–106; horizontal residues 103; rice 138; root crops obsidian Harris matrix 98
93, 96, 97, 103; methods of 93–97; 138–39; sorrel 182; squash 51, 139, Global Positioning System (GPS) Hatra 300
and mitigation 329; open-area 195; supply 287; wheat 55, 138, 74, 80 Hawes, Harriet Boyd 34, 34
96; processing and classification 191, 194, 195, 271; see also cereals; global warming 178, 179 headdresses 53, 158, 219, 266
of 103–5; and settlement diet; fruit; meals; nutrition; globalization 35 hearths 42, 58, 89, 90, 133, 150, 165,
analysis 150, 152–53; of sites subsistence Göbekli Tepe 268, 270–71, 270, 271 166, 183
62–106; and stratigraphy 91–93; foraminifera 115, 115, 177, 178, 178 goddesses 32, 172, 322, 322 Heit el-Ghurab (“Lost City of the
and underwater archaeology formation processes 43–45, 44, 85, gods 163, 322, 322, 323, 323 Pyramid Builders”) 81, 81
101–3, 101; unnecessary 63–64, 91, 256; cultural 43, 45, 46–48, gold 216, 218, 219, 228, 229, 265, 267, Heizer, Robert 204
85–86; vertical 93, 96, 97, 103 46; non-cultural/natural 43, 45, 267, 311, 336 Hempel, Carl 285
explanation 284–92; and 48–60; and radiocarbon dating Google Earth 77–78, 77 henges 160–61, 160, 161; see also
causation 285–88; general 285; 128 Gournia 34 Stonehenge
historical 284, 292; idealist Formative period (Americas): Early GPMP (Giza Plateau Mapping Hengistbury Head 92
284–85; monocausal 286–88; 153, 194, 226–27, 227; Middle Project) 80, 81, 81 Herculaneum 244
multivariate 286, 288, 290–91; 226–27 GPR (ground-penetrating radar) heritage management 316–37
postprocessual (interpretive) forts 23, 50, 75, 94–95, 94, 95, 194, 306 87–88, 88 Herodotus 196
288–92; specific 284–85 Forum Novum 88, 88 GPS see Global Positioning System Heuneburg 194
fossils 77, 130, 131, 134–35, 134, 221, grain 51, 185, 193, 194, 215 hieroglyphics: Egyptian 21; Maya 21,
facial reconstruction 239–40, 240, 255–56; DNA analysis of 243; Gran Dolina site 131, 131, 249, 250 21, 156, 162–63, 266, 266
241, 241, 247, 308 hominin 301; of human remains Grauballe Man 203, 235, 236–37, Higham, Charles 158
Faiyum 34, 196, 273 299; microscopic 178; pollen 183; 236, 237 Hippodamus of Miletus 265
fall-off analysis 224–25 teeth 204 grave-goods 52, 52, 53, 56, 148, Hiroshima 32
farming 135, 138–39, 148, 192, 213; France 64, 258–59, 260, 261, 306, 329 154–55, 157–58, 172–73, 173, 256, historical chronologies 116–19, 116
origins of 282–83; and pollen “Frankfurt School” 289 267, 319; furniture 52, 52, 53; hoards 47, 226
levels 182, 182; rise of 26; see also Freidel, David 170 prestige 218, 219 Hodder, Ian 30, 165, 165, 167, 172,
agriculture frequency seriation 114 Great Mortuary (Spiro) 154–55, 154 288–89
Fatehpur Sikri 328 fruit 181, 184–85, 237; figs Great Pyramid of Cheops/Khufu Hohokam: bowls 113; site 326
fats 192, 194, 248 203; grapes 185; plums 55; 52, 86, 214 Holbeach 73
features 41, 42; assessing the layout watermelons 203 Great Stone (Mexico City) 322 Hole, Frank 114
of 82–90; locating 64–82; survey Fujimura, Shinichi 304, 304 Great Wall of China 64, 64 Holocene period 115, 116
and excavation of 62–106 functionalism 277–78, 283 Great Zimbabwe 34, 280, 281, 281 Homer 65
fecal material 177, 184, 190, 202, funerary rituals 271 Greater Angkor Project 79 hominins 35, 35, 134–35, 135, 150, 238,
203–4, 250 furniture 52, 52, 53, 185, 214–15; Greece 14, 17, 140, 229, 239, 280, 243, 254, 255, 301
field monuments 17 grave 52, 52, 53 299–300, 305–6, 311, 329; Classical Homo 134, 135; antecessor 131, 131, 249;
field techniques 22–25 162, 273–74; Mycenaean 140, erectus 130, 135, 243, 254, 255, 257;
field walking 320 Galeria site 131 162, 229 floresiensis 135; habilis 130, 134, 135,
fire, human use of see garbage pits 102, 110, 111–12 Greenland 177, 178, 179, 204, 205–6 254, 255; sapiens 130, 135, 138, 194,
pyrotechnology Garrod, Dorothy 22, 22, 170 grid systems 68, 69, 83, 84–85; for 243, 254, 257, 333
first emperor (of China), tomb of 13 Gatecliff Shelter 128, 128 excavation 93, 94, 94, 96–97, 97 housing 146, 152–53, 153; Bronze
fish 81, 187, 190, 202, 203, 204, 248, Gatun Basin 183 Grime’s Graves 210 Age 57; Makah Indian 58
283; chub 204; perch 81 gender 167, 168, 170–73; roles 171 ground survey 64, 65–70; and aerial Hoving, Thomas 311
fishing 196 generalization 277, 282, 285, 292, 294 survey 72; extensive 70; intensive Huitzilopochtli 322, 322, 323
fission-track dating 130 genetic dating 116, 134 68, 70; systematic 68, 68, 69; human remains 233–51; assessing
Five Points, New York 167–68, 168 GeoEye 77 unsystematic 68 diet from 202–6; and causes of
Flag Fen 304 Geographic Information Systems ground-based remote sensing death 244–47; and deformity
Flannery, Kent 153, 285, 287, 288, (GIS) 72, 79–82, 80, 81; and data 87–89 244–47, 245; and disease 244–47;
293–94 layers 80, 80; and excavation ground-penetrating radar (GPR) physical attributes of 233,
Fleischman, Barbara 312 94, 95, 95 87–88, 88 234–44; variety of 233–34
Fleischman, Lawrence 312 geology 18–19, 220–21 Guatemala 13, 118, 290, 290 human sacrifice 56, 59, 170, 203, 230,
Flinders Petrie, Sir William 22, geomagnetic reversals 133 Gull Lake site 201, 201 237, 266
23, 113 Georgia (United States) 185, 205 Hungary 313
Florida 60 Gerasimov, Mikhail 239 habitus 31 hunter-gatherers 138, 139, 148, 192,
fluxgate magnetometers 89, 90, 90 Germany 329 Hadar sediments 181 244; artifact distribution of
Foley, Robert 151–52, 152 Getty Affair 313 Hadrian 240 229–30; evolution of 284; and
Folsom points 212, 213 Getty Museum see J. Paul Getty Hagar Qim 171 ground surveys 68; mobile
food 181, 184–85, 237; acorns 205, Museum Hagasa 242 groups of 144, 145, 147, 149, 150–
248; barley 138, 191, 193, 194; Gimbutas, Marija 32, 171–72, 279 hair 236, 241; DNA analysis of 56; 52; and pottery 215; sanctuaries
beans 139; beef 81; butter 194; Girik-i-Haciyan 69 scale pattern of 204 of 270; and transition to settled
cereal bran 236; corncobs 202; GIS see Geographic Information half-life 123, 124 life 195, 283
eggs 202, 204; grain 51, 185, 193, Systems Hammurabi 164, 164 hydraulic hypothesis 286
194, 215; maize 51, 139, 194, 195, Given, Michael 68 Han period 202 hydrogen isotopes 178, 183
205, 249; milk 248; millet 138, Giza Plateau Mapping Project Hancock, Graham 303
190; noodles 190; nuts 202, 204; (GPMP) 80, 81, 81 hand-axes 113, 135, 138, 211, 212, 213, Ica 51
pemmican 200, 201; of plants glacials (cold periods) 115 255, 304 ice: ages 178; caps 177; cores 115,
191–96; potatoes 139; production glaciers 177, 178 Hanover 120 116, 119, 178, 178, 179, 180, 206;
348 Index
evidence from 177–79; sheets Kehoe, Thomas 200, 201 Macedonia, Former Yugoslav metallurgy 215
120, 177, 178 Kennewick Man 301, 308, 308 Republic of 299–300, 299 metals 210, 215, 216–17, 222, 265;
Ice Age (Pleistocene epoch) 115, Kenyon, Kathleen 24, 24 Machu Picchu 138 corrosion of 48; non-ferrous
120, 131, 138, 180, 185–87, 188, 189, Khmer empire 265 Magdalenian period 255, 258 216–17; survival of 49, 49
258–60, 282–84, 333 Khok Phanom Di 158, 158 magnetic remote sensing 89 Metro Rail Project 326–27, 327
“Ice Maiden” (“Juanita”) 13, 56 Kidder, Alfred 24–25, 24 Magnetic Resonance Imaging Metropolitan Museum of Art 306,
Iceland 205 Knapp, Bernard 68 (MRI) 247 311–12
Iceman 11, 53, 54–55, 54, 55 knappers 212, 213 magnetism, measurement of Mexico 139, 153, 153, 172, 226–27
identity: archaeology of 167–73, Koobi Fora 134, 150, 151, 197 89–90, 90 Mexico City 66, 322–23
298–300, 301; national 299 Koster site 97, 97 magnetometer surveys 89–90, microgravimetric equipment 87
ideology 283, 291, 294, 300 Kow Swamp 309 90, 101 microliths (stone tools) 212
IKONOS 77 kraters 173, 306, 312 Makah Indians 58, 58 microwear analysis 193, 214
illegal antiquities 309–14, 319, “Kurgan migration” 279 Makapansgat 205 Midwestern Taxonomic System 25
327–29 malnutrition 248–49, 248 migration 179, 244, 277, 278–81, 280
Illinois State Museum 82 La Brea asphalt pits 50 Malta 261, 264 Mimbres: Foundation 310; people
Ilopango volcano 39 La Garma cave 259 Malthus, Thomas 287 42–43; potters 310, 310, 311
Inca 47, 138, 140; mummies 13, 53, La Plaza 326, 327 maps 68, 72, 77, 78, 320; cognitive Minoans 34, 156
56, 56; record-keeping 163 La Vache cave 259 255; and Geographic Miracle, Rebekah 81
India 328 Lajia site 190 Information Systems 79–82, Mirador Basin 290
individual, archaeology of the lake-dwellings 59–60 81; and remote sensing 89; and Mississippian period 219; Spiro 153,
167–73 Lalibela 328 settlement analysis 149, 156; 154–55, 154, 155
induction 28, 29 Laming-Emperaire, Annette 258 Teotihuacan Mapping Project 70, mitigation 317, 319–24, 329–31
Indus Valley civilization 111, 111, landscape: archaeology 82, 260–61; 82–84, 83; time-slices/slice-maps mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)
140, 253, 262, 263, 265, 286 and memory 261–62 88, 88 242–43, 242, 244, 247
Ingstad, Anne Stine 65 language 254–55 Marcus, Joyce 294 Moche civilization 140, 311; pottery
Ingstad, Helge 65 L’Anse aux Meadows 65, 65 Marx, Karl 283–84, 283 of 214
inorganic materials, survival of Lanzón (Great Image) 268, 269 Marxism 277; archaeology and 277, Moctezuma, Eduardo Matos 323
48–49 Lapita culture 280, 280 283–84, 289; see also neo-Marxism Mohenjodaro 71–72, 84, 262, 262, 263
insects 188, 188, 204, 270 Larsen, Clark 205 Mary Rose (ship) 101 MOLA (Museum of London
interaction spheres 229 Lascaux cave 15, 64, 259, 260 Masada 180 Archaeology) 98, 98
interglacial periods 115, 116, 178 law: codes 164, 164; preservation masks 219; gold 219; jade 218; molluscs 204; land 187; marine
Inuit people 204, 205 320; of superposition 91, 93; wooden 154, 155 187–88, 218
Iran 114, 138, 225, 327 universal 285 mass spectrometry 125, 129, 178 Monte Albán 159, 159
Iraq 196, 300, 318–19, 318, 328, 329 lead 216; isotopes 222 material culture 11, 14, 165, 167–68, monuments 150, 158–62, 159, 298,
iron 49, 89, 217; ore 226–27 Leakey, Mary 35, 35 288–89, 292 320–21, 323
Iron Age 20, 57, 59, 75, 173, 183, 194, leather 45, 55, 56, 213, 214 material engagement 294–95 Morgan, Lewis Henry 21
203, 217, 239 LeBlanc, Steven 310 matrix 42, 50 Mostar bridge 318
Isaac, Glynn 150, 151, 255 Lehner, Mark 81 Maya 13, 24, 35, 39, 51, 75–76, 140, Mosul Museum 300
Islam 109, 140 Lehringen 215 230, 328, 331, 332; Classic period Motecuhzoma II 219
Islamic State (IS) 100, 300 Leicester 246–47, 246 118, 290; collapse 288, 290–91, Mother Goddess 32, 172
isotopes 124, 129, 130, 177–80, Leone, Mark 291–92 290, 291; hieroglyphics 21, 21, Moundbuilders 15, 18, 21
183, 189, 204, 222; analysis of Lerici, Carlo 86–87 156, 162–63, 266, 266; historical mounds 15, 18, 42, 47, 53, 59, 65, 66,
205–6, 222 Leroi-Gourhan, André 166, 258–59 chronologies/calendars 117, 69, 71, 84, 91, 111, 111, 145, 154,
Israel 130, 194 Levallois technique 211, 212 118, 118; Preclassic period 290; 155, 158–60, 160, 270, 305, 332; see
Italy 306, 313 Levant 224, 225, 228–29, 270, 280, symbols of power 266; and also tells
ivory 218, 219, 228, 256, 259, 259, 336 300 warfare 170 Mousterian period 165
Lévi-Strauss, Claude 289 Mazzucato, Camilla 81 Mozambique 194
J. Paul Getty Museum 311, 312, 313 Levy, Leon 312 McKern, W.C. 25 MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging)
jade 218, 218, 323 Libby, Willard 27, 123–24, 125 Meadowcroft 190 247
Jam (Afghanistan) 328 LIDAR (Light Detection and meals: as funerary offerings 202, mummies 203, 239, 240, 242, 247,
Jamestown 93, 94–95, 94, 95, 180 Ranging) 73, 74–76, 75, 76 203; remains of 202, 203–4, 236–37 311; cases of 239; formation of
Japan 304 Light Rail Transit Project 326 measurement, symbols of 260, (mummification) 47, 51; Inca 13,
Jarmo 225 literacy 272–74, 272 262–63, 262 53, 56, 56
Jefferson, Thomas 15, 18 lithics 68 megaliths 161, 261, 271, 302 Mungo, Lake 299, 309
Jemaa head 132–33 Little Ice Age 179 Meketre, tomb of 196 Museum of London Archaeology
Jericho 24 Llullaillaco bodies 56, 56 Melanesians 204, 218 (MOLA) 98, 98
Jerusalem 24 Lomekwi 198, 210 Meresamun 245 museums 305–6, 309–14, 329
jewelry 52, 158, 173, 245, 327 London 12, 60, 98, 98 Meskell, Lynn 172 Must Farm settlement 57, 57
Johnson, Gregory 149 longevity 237–39 Mesoamerica 117–18, 139, 159, 162, Mycenaean civilization 140, 162,
Jordan 334 looters 42–43, 50, 154–55, 302, 227, 227, 265, 273 219, 229
Julien, Michèle 255 309–12, 317–19 Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) 22, myth 16, 303
lost-wax method 265 92, 194
Kakadu National Park 299 Lovelock Cave 204 Mesopotamia 21, 78, 140, 149, 149, Napoleon 21, 311
Kamitakamori site 304, 304 Lucero, Lisa J. 331, 332, 332 163–64, 273, 286; cylinder seals NASA 76, 77, 79
Karanga people 281 Lydian Hoard 306 of 319 National Environmental Policy Act
Karlin, Claudine 255 Lyell, Sir Charles 19 metallographic examination 217 321, 324
Index 349
National Historic Preservation Act Olduvai Gorge 129–30, 134, 135, 197, Peacock, David 221 polar regions 119–20, 177
321, 324–25, 334 198, 211, 212 Pecos Ruin 24–25, 24 pollen: analysis (palynology)
National Museum of Iraq 318–19, Olmec 140; head 138 Perge 312 115–16, 181–82, 183, 184, 185;
318 Omo Valley 181 permafrost 53, 188 diagrams 182, 182; fossil 183
National Park Service 72 Ontario, Lake 101 Persepolis, Iran 138 Polynesian migrations 179, 279–80,
National Register of Historic Places open sites 150 Perticarari, Luigi 311 280
324 optically stimulated luminescence Peru 13, 24, 39, 51, 139, 202, 214, 267, Pompeii 17–18, 17, 39, 51, 99, 162,
nationalism 299–300, 318 (OSL) 133 269, 272, 287–88 202, 233, 244, 273
Native American Graves Protection Oranjemund shipwreck 336 petrological examination 221 Pope, Alexander 301
and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) organic materials, survival of 48, Philip II of Macedon 299, 300 population: density 286; growth
301, 307–8, 321 49–60, 176 Philip III of Macedon 299, 300 287, 288; size 282
Native Americans 18, 25, 94, 97, 165, Orkney Islands 161–62, 261, 261 Phillips, Philip 28 Portable Antiquities Scheme 330
196, 200, 205, 230, 230, 244, 248, Oroqen people 12 Phoenicians 101, 280 Portland vase 219
306–8, 307, 325, 326–27 Oseberg ship 59 photogrammetric plans 72 Portugal 259
Natufian culture 22, 282 osteons 238, 238 physical anthropology see positivism 291
natural disasters 49, 50–51 Ostia 306 biological anthropology Postgate, Nicholas 164
natural selection 19–20, 284 ostraka 273–74, 273 physical appearance 233, 236, potassium: potassium-40 (40K) 129;
Nazca 51 Other World 260, 268 239–41, 244 potassium-argon dating (K-Ar)
Neanderthals 22, 135, 135, 238, Overton Down earthwork 45, 45 physical attributes 233, 234–44 116, 129–30, 131, 133; potassium
243–44 oxidization/oxidation 49, 216 phytoliths 181, 183, 183, 184, 193, 194 iodide 194
Near East 22, 24, 26, 65, 138, 140, 162, oxygen: exclusion of 50, 58; isotope Piltdown Man 302, 303 potlatch ceremony 230, 230
217, 223–25, 282–83 analysis 177, 179, 183, 188, 222, Pincevent 166 potsherds 84, 185, 194, 215, 311
Nefertiti 306 246, 247; oxygen-16 (16O) 178, 179; Piperno, Dolores 183 pottery 45, 68, 168, 177, 183, 210,
neo-Marxism 291–92 oxygen-18 (18O) 178, 178, 179 Pires-Ferreira, Jane 226–27, 227 214; characterization of 221;
Neolithic (New Stone Age) 20, 24, Ozette site 50, 57, 58, 58 “piston corers” 178 dating of 111–14, 112, 113, 118, 132;
59, 159, 264; artifact distribution pits 86, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94, 110–11, distribution of 227; grave-goods
224–25, 225; artifacts 215, 218, 221, Pääbo, Svante 242, 243 170; asphalt 50; burial 53, 86–87, 158; manufacture of 215–16;
222; cemeteries 266–67; conflict Paca, William 291–92 170, 170, 214; filled-in 88; garbage migrationist and diffusionist
in 170; dating of 114; diet 190, Pakal, Lord 218 102, 110, 111–12; shovel-test 86; explanations for spread of 278,
192, 194; Early 215; excavation Palenque, Mexico 218 storage 42, 191, 192, 285; test 279–80, 280; as offerings 56;
of 102; and gender 171, 171, 172; Paleo-Indians 190, 212, 213 85, 86 ostraka 273–74, 273; and plant
monuments/public works of paleoentomology (study of Pitt-Rivers, General Augustus Lane- remains 185; processing and
160, 161, 161, 263; sanctuaries 270; insects) 12, 188 Fox 22, 22, 96, 320 classification of 103; Roman 98;
stone 210 paleoethnobotany 190, 195 plant species: barley 138, 191, 193, seriation of 113–14; survival of
Neolithic Revolution 26 Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) 15, 20, 194; beans 139; Californian 48–49; typologies 112, 113, 113;
Nergal Gate 300 199; art 239; artifacts 209, 215, bristlecone pine 121, 126; wheel-thrown 215–16, 216
Nevali Çori 271 218; burials 256; dating of 109, Chenopodium 195; domestication power 260, 294; symbols of 265–72
New Acropolis Museum 305, 306 129, 130, 133; diet 197; excavation 138, 192, 195, 195; einkorn wheat predators 189, 197, 198, 198
New Agers 302, 302 of 93, 102; and formation 195, 271; grasses 139, 181, 182, preservation laws 320
New Archaeology 28–30, 277, 282, processes 43–44, 48; and human 183, 193, 194, 205; lime tree bark prestige goods 172
283, 285, 288, 293 exploitation of animals 197–99; 57; manioc 139, 194; marsh elder preventive archaeology see
New Britain 222 Japanese 304; Lower 129, 133, 195; millet 138, 190; mustard archaeology, salvage (rescue/
New Guinea 218, 293 135, 197, 209, 254; Middle 22, 135, 51, 194; oak 121, 126; potato 139; preventive)
New York 60 165, 215, 254; representation 257; rice 138; sorghum wheat 138; Princess of Vix burial 172–73, 173
Newark earthworks 71 settlement analysis of 150, 151; sorrel 182; Spanish moss 185; processual archaeology 28–29,
Newgrange passage grave 262, societies of 145; tools 48, 135, 211, squash 51, 139, 195; sunflower 277–78, 282–84, 291, 292
264, 264 212, 254, 255, 256; Upper 211, 212, 51; terebinth tree 228; thorn tree project design 29
nitrogen isotopes 206, 249 218, 239, 244, 255, 256, 257, 258 (Acacia karroo) 186; tobacco 195; Proskouriakoff, Tatiana 35, 35
Njemps people 165 paleomagnetic dating see wheat 55, 138, 191, 194, 195, 271; protein 192, 205, 236, 246
Nok culture 132–33 archaeomagnetic dating yew 215 provenience 42, 93, 102, 312
non-site evidence see evidence, paleopathology 245, 247 plants 51; classification of 205; pseudoarchaeology 303–5
off-site Palestine 228 and climate 176, 177; DNA of Ptolemaic period 196
Norse settlements 205–6, 206 Palmyra 100, 300, 301 192, 194; fibers of 204, 213, 214; public, the, and archaeology 33,
Northampton, Lord 313 palynology see pollen, analysis foods 191–96; impressions 297–315
Nunamiut people 165, 166 Panama 183 of 185, 193; macrobotanical public works 150, 158–62, 159,
nutrition 248–50 Pang Mapha 333–34, 333 remains of 181, 184–86, 191–93, 261, 298
papyrus 52, 162, 273 195; microbotanical remains Pueblo Grande 326, 326
Oaxaca 153, 153, 172, 226–27 Paranthropus 134 of 181–84; reconstructing the Pulak, Cemal 228, 229
obsidian 130, 153, 212, 221–22, parietal art see cave art environment of 180–86; remains pyramids, Egyptian 52, 64, 81, 81,
224–25, 225, 226, 323 Pariti 240 of 51, 63, 176, 177, 181–86, 191–93, 86–87, 214, 248
oceans: salinity and density of 178; Parthenon 300, 305–6, 305 195, 249, 270; residues of 181, 185, pyrotechnology 210, 214–15, 218
sediments in 177, 178 past: destruction of the 42–43, 192, 193–94
Ohalo II 194 47–48, 298, 309, 311, 317–19; plaster 183; plaster-cast figures 233 Qafzeh cave 130
Okeechobee Basin 60 ownership of the 305–9, 314; use Plato 303 qualitative approaches 29
Oldcroghan Man 59, 59 of the 330–31 Pleistocene epoch see Ice Age Quanterness 161–62
Oldowan industry 135, 211, 212 Pazyryk 39, 53 Pokot people 165 quantitative approaches 29
350 Index
QuickBird 77, 77 Romans 50, 60, 73, 88, 98, 98, 100, segmentary societies 145–46, 147, Smith, Bruce 195
quipu (knotted ropes) 163 140, 219, 239, 248; amphorae of 157, 159, 160 Smithsonian Institution 32
194, 223, 223, 224, 226; art of 240; self-consciousness 254–55 social analysis, methods of 148–67
radioactive clocks 109, 122–31 and artifact distribution 223, seriation 110, 113–14, 114 social anthropology see cultural
radioactive decay 122, 124, 124, 132 223, 224, 226; burial practices of Service, Elman 145, 147–48 anthropology
radiocarbon dating 15, 27, 111, 306; climate of 180; historical settlements 144–45, 147; analysis social archaeology 141–74; methods
116, 122–29, 123, 128, 129, chronologies of 118–19; of 148–56, 149, 151, 152; patterns of social analysis in 148–67
131; application of 125; and language of 280; settlement of 66 social change, evidence for 155
bog bodies 236; calibration analysis of 156; shipwrecks of Sevso Treasure 313, 313 social class 146, 283, 286
of 125–26, 126, 127, 127, 129; 101 sex 168, 171 social inequality 167–69
contamination of samples in Rome 14, 17, 66, 140, 162, 306 sexing 199, 233, 234, 235, 236, 244 social organization 156, 159, 160, 161,
126–28; of deep-sea cores 178; Roosevelt, Theodore 321 sexual dimorphism 235 165, 167, 260; symbols of 265–72
of foraminifera 115; history Rosetta Stone 21 SfM (Structure from Motion) 74 social status 146, 148, 153, 157–58,
of 123–25; of human remains Rottländer, Rolf 194 Shang civilization 140, 286 171, 189, 230
54, 244, 246; impact of 128–29; ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) Shawnee National Forest 82 society 143–48; classification
interpretation of samples 101 shell 158, 158, 177, 199, 204, 213, of 144–45; development of
from 126–28; limitations of 125; Russell Cave 195 214, 218, 219, 226, 327; calcium 11; ideology of 283; nature of
method basis of 123–25; of plant Rwanda 245 carbonate 187; engraved 257, 257; 144–48; scale of 144–49, 167;
materials 116, 185; and pollen marine 153, 154, 155, 187–88, 222, sedentary 152–56, 215, 282–83;
analysis 116; precision of 125; SAA (Society for American 255–56 segmentary 145–46, 147, 157,
range of 125; of skeletons 241; Archaeology) 307, 325 Shepard, Anna O. 35, 35 159, 160
and tree-ring dating 120, 125 sacrifice 56, 59, 170, 203, 230, 237, ships 214; see also boats Society for American Archaeology
Ramesses II, temple of 138 266, 268 shipwrecks 64, 100–102, 102, 194, (SAA) 307, 325
ranking 146, 148, 154–55, 157–58, Sahagún, Bernardino de 196 226, 228–29, 228, 229, 321, 336 Solutrean period 258
160 Sahara 189 Shoocongdej, Rasmi 333–34, 333 Somerset Levels 57–59
Rappaport, Roy 293 Samarra 328 shovel-test pits (STPs) 86 Soshinfudozaka site 304
Rasmussen, Morten 244 sampling strategies 68, 69; simple SHPO (State Historic Preservation South Africa 77, 185–86, 205, 215, 238,
Rathje, William 288 random 69, 69; stratified Officer) 324, 325 257, 257
raw materials 218, 220–21, 255 random 69, 69, 84–85; stratified Siberia 12, 39, 53, 53, 243, 244 South America 48, 56, 138, 139, 140,
Real Alto (Ecuador) 194 unaligned systematic 69, 69; Side-Looking Airborne Radar 311, 334
reciprocity 223 systematic 69, 69 (SLAR) 76 South Asia 138
reconnaissance 25 San Bartolo 13 side-scan sonar 101, 101 South Carolina 185
red ocher 219, 256, 257, 257 San Juan (whaling ship) 101–2, 102 Silbury Hill 160, 160 Spain 189, 259, 260
redistribution 146 San people 145 silver 216, 218, 222, 336 spears 215, 229, 256
Redman, Charles 69 sanctuaries 270–71, 270, 271 Sima de los Huesos site 131, 131, 249 Spector, Janet 32
refitting 92, 212–13 Sanders, William T. 66 Sima del Elefante site 131 spectrometry 125, 129, 178, 194
Reinhard, Johan 56 Santa Rosa Island 307 Sipán 311 Spiro 146, 153, 154–55, 154, 155
Rekhmire 214 Saqqara 202, 248, 248 Sitagroi 193 Spondylus gaederopus 222
relatedness 241–42, 244 SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) site surface survey 82–86, 83, 85, 89 State Historic Preservation Officer
relativism 291, 292, 293 78–79 sites 16, 42; assessing layout of (SHPO) 324, 325
relief sites 73, 73, 80, 80, 90 sarcophagi 240, 241, 319 82–90; hierarchy of 148–56, 149; state societies 138, 138, 140, 145, 147,
reliefs 138, 248, 258, 265–66, 270, 271, satellite photography 70–71, 74, locating 64–82; multi-period 148, 149, 153, 261, 261, 285–87;
271, 322 77–79, 77, 80, 320 85, 91; size of 149; survey and early 146–47; origins of 286–88
religion 267–72, 293–94, 306, 330 scanning electron microscope 197, excavation of 62–106 stelae 21; calendrical 118
remote sensing 63, 70–71, 74, 75, 79; 213, 238 Sitka 230 step-trenching 97
electromagnetic 87–89; ground- scavenging hypothesis 44–45 skeletons 42, 50, 99, 130, 155, Stephens, John Lloyd 21
based 87–89; magnetic 89 Schedule of Ancient Monuments 157, 172, 233, 234, 235, 322; Steward, Julian 26
remotely operated vehicles 318 African-American 168–69; and stone 273; artifacts 210–13, 221;
(ROVs) 101 Schliemann, Heinrich 65, 215, 303 age determination 238–41, carvings 259; flakes 210–12, 213;
Renaissance 16–17, 140 Schmidt, Klaus 270–71 238; animal 256; Australian flint 92, 210, 215; palettes 327;
Renfrew, Jane 192 Schøyen, Martin 313–14 Aboriginal 309; and cause of quarries 210; travertine 130
replication 212 Schultz, Frederick 312 death 244–45, 247; and deformity Stone Age 20; see also Mesolithic;
representation 256–60 Scourge (schooner) 101 and disease 247; and diet 189, Neolithic; Paleolithic
rescue archaeology see archaeology, screening (sieving) 184 204, 205, 248; and mass killings stone tools 44–45, 44, 84, 131, 209,
salvage (rescue/preventive) sea: and natural formation 170; Native American 307, 308; 210; and animal exploitation
research: design 64; focus 29; processes 48, 49; change in level Richard III 246–47, 246; and 197–99, 198; burial of 256;
publication 64; strategies 64 of 178, 189, 282–83 sexing 171, 234, 235, 237; signs of dating 113, 134–35, 138; and diet
resistivity: meters 88; profiling seals 164, 223; Harappan 111 malnutrition in 248; trauma 247; 177; first 210; function of 213;
88–89; of soil 86 Searle, John 254, 295 see also bones manufacture of 210–13, 255;
Rhodes, Cecil 281 seasonality 199–201 Skhul cave 130 obsidian 225; pebble 135, 210,
Richard III 246–47, 246, 247 sediments 115–16, 120; lake skulls 130, 131, 135, 233, 238, 255; and planning time 255;
Rift Valley 129 184; marine 126, 177, 178; and 238–41, 240, 241, 247; bison 200; plant remains on 183, 184, 194;
Ring of Brodgar 261 microfauna 187; and plant Neanderthal 22; sexing 234 processing and classification of
Río Azul (Guatemala) 118 remains 182, 184 SLAR (Side-Looking Airborne 103; raw materials used in 255;
ritual 253, 268, 271, 272, 293; seeds 51, 181, 184–85, 193, 194, 195, Radar) 76 refitting 212–13; replication of
bloodletting 266, 266; burial 271 203, 204, 236; oils of 194 smelting 217, 222 212; and settlement analysis
Index 351
150, 151–52, 153; survival of 48; temples 16, 42, 47, 79, 82–84, 159, emissary trading 224; external Velikovsky, Immanuel 303
technology used in 211–13, 211; 269, 272, 301; Buddhist 328; and trade 288; freelance trading 224 Venus de Milo 306
Thai 333 centralization 156; Christians transects (straight paths) 68, 69 “Venus figurines” 259, 259
Stonehenge 19, 75, 160–61, 160, 161, and 300; Great Temple (Aztec) tree-ring dating Vergina 300
261, 262, 302, 303 322, 322, 323; of Malta 261, 264; (dendrochronology) 59–60, 116, Vesuvius, Mount 17–18, 17, 50–51
Stoneking, Mark 242–43 Parthenon 300, 305–6, 305; of 120–22, 120, 121 Vikings 59, 65, 179
Strabo 248 Ramesses II 138; Roman 98; tribes 145–46, 147, 160, 165, 165 villages 146, 147, 152, 194, 196, 310
strata (layers) 91–92, 94, 110 Temple of Bel 301; of Tikal 290 Trigger, Bruce 288 Vindolanda fort 50
stratification 18–19, 91, 92, 93 Tennessee-Tombigbee project 325 Trinil 257, 257 volcanic activity 39, 50–51, 115, 233
stratigraphy 18, 91–93, 92, 110–13, Tenochtitlan 322–23 TRM (thermoremanent von Post, Lennart 181
111, 150, 178 Teotihuacan 16; Mapping Project magnetism) 133
Structure from Motion (SfM) 74 70, 82–84, 83; pyramid-temples 70 Troodos Mountains 68 Walbrook 98
Stukeley, William 17 terracotta 132–33, 240, 241, 323 Troy 65 walls 47, 57, 73, 196, 214
style 18, 112, 113 “terracotta warriors” 13, 64, 86, 239 True, Marion 313 warfare 169–70, 230, 287, 288, 317,
Su Wen 248 textiles 45, 154, 214, 218; and natural Tugen people 167 318–19, 329
subsistence 175–77, 189–206 formation processes 56, 57; Turin Royal Canon 117 Warka Vase 318, 318
subsurface detection 86–87, 89 Roman 98 Turin Shroud 125, 129, 129 water 13, 100–102, 101, 177–79;
Sumer 163, 263, 287, 318 Thailand 333 Turkana, Lake 150 transport 76; see also underwater
Sungir 256, 256 Thebes 196, 206, 214, 239 Turkey 12, 30, 69, 172, 226, 228–29, archaeology
supernatural 47, 253, 260, 261, 271 Thera eruption 115 228, 229, 235, 263–64, 263, 268, waterlogged conditions 50, 51,
superposition, law of 91, 93 thermoremanent magnetism 270–71, 270, 271, 306, 312, 312 56–60, 92, 98, 102, 103, 121, 126,
survey 319–20, 324–25, 329; (TRM) 133 Tutankhamun 306, 319; mummy of 182, 186, 191, 193, 203, 214
environmental impact of 329–30; thin-section analysis 221 240; reign of 108; tomb of 52, 52, Watson, Patty Jo 69
of features 62–106; ground 64, Thomsen, C.J. 103 63, 306, 319 Watson, Peter 312
65–70, 68, 72; regional 66, 67, Thosarat, Rachanie 158 Tylor, Edward 21 weapons 51, 55, 94, 214–15, 229, 256
68–69; and settlement analysis Three Age System 20 types 68, 104, 105, 112 “Weary Herakles,” The 312, 312
148–49, 152; of sites 62–106; Tibet 177 typology 28, 104, 105; typological weight, units of 262–63, 262
surface (systematic) 63, 66, Tierras Largas 153, 153 sequences 110, 112–14, 113 Welshbury hillfort 75
82–86, 83, 85, 89; underwater Tikal 118, 290 Wervershoof, Lake 184
101, 101 time, measurement of 108–9, 262 UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) Wessex 159, 161
Sutton Hoo 235 time-slices (slice-maps) 88, 88 74 West Kennet long barrow 160
Swartkrans Cave 215 Tiwanaku period 240 UCL Aramaic Incantation Bowls Western Pacific 138–39
Swiss lakes 59, 100 Tlaloc 322, 323 313–14, 314 wetlands 56–60
symbols 227, 253–54, 256, 260–72, Tlaltecuhtli 323 Uluburun wreck 226, 228–29, 229 Wheatley, Paul 265
271, 289, 292, 293–94; evolution Tlesnasa, Seianti Hanunia 240–41, Umatilla tribe 308 Wheeler box-grid 96–97, 97
of 254–60; exchange and 241 Unas, pyramid of 248 Wheeler, Sir Mortimer 23–24, 23, 34,
interaction of 227–30; and Tlingit people 230 underwater archaeology 13, 96, 111, 111
literacy 272–73; and nationalism Tollund Man 59, 203, 239 100–102, 101, 177–79 White, Shelby 312
299–300; of organization 265–72; Toltecs 16, 140 UNESCO 36, 313, 325, 327, 328 Willey, Gordon 26, 28, 66
of power 265–72; and religion 294 tombs 23, 87, 261; Etruscan 86, 311; uniformitarianism 19 Wilson, Allan 242–43
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) of first emperor (of China) 13; United Nations (UN) 301, 325 Windeby 235
78–79 foodstuffs in 196, 196, 202, 203; of United States 51, 72, 82, 112, 113, Wittfogel, Karl 286
Syracuse 300 the Great Mortuary 154, 155; Lord 120–22, 128, 128, 146, 153, 154–55, wood 56, 181, 185–86; artifacts 209,
Syria 162, 162, 228, 300, 301, 319 Pakal’s 218; Maya 118; of Meketre 154, 155, 185, 230, 250, 261, 279, 213–14, 215; timbers 48; tools 51,
systematic survey see survey, 196; Newgrange 262, 264, 264; 310, 311 214–15
surface painted walls 47, 196, 214; and Universal Transverse Mercator World Heritage List 327, 328
place names 65; Quanterness (UTM) coordinate system 80 worship 268
Talheim 170, 170 161–62; robbers of 306; of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) writing systems 14, 144, 148, 272–74,
Taliban 300 Tutankhamun 52, 52, 63, 306, 319; 74 272, 280; Egyptian 21; Maya 21, 21,
taphonomy 43 at Vergina 300; see also burials Ur 263, 264; ziggurat of 138 156, 162–63, 266, 266; and plant
Taranto 274 toolmaking 32, 210–13, 211, 212 Ur, Jason 78, 78 records 186, 195–96; and social
tattoos 51, 53, 53, 55 tools: bronze 229; charting uranium: uranium-238 (238U) 130; analysis 150, 162–64
Taung 238 discarded 165; and cultural uranium-series dating 115, 116, Wyke Down 90
Taylor, Walter W. 28 formation processes 46, 46, 47; 126, 130, 131, 178
teeth 55, 130, 183, 184, 188, 199, 200, design of 255; manufacture of Urban Revolution 26, 139–40 X-rays 180, 247, 248
236, 240, 246; abrasion of 205, 255; and planning time 255–56; urban settlements 98, 102, 147,
248; as age indicators 237–38, plant residues on 193–94; raw 285–86 Y-chromosome DNA 243, 244
241; decay of 205, 236; and dental materials used in 255; see also UTM (Universal Transverse Yalbac 332
morphology 241; and diet 204–5; stone tools Mercator) coordinate system 80 Yaxchilan 266, 266
enamel of 204–5, 238; fox 256; top-down approaches 144, 167 Uxmal 328 Yucatan 290
and malnutrition 248 total stations 80
Tell Brak 78 trace-element analysis 217, 221–22 value, concept of 57–58, 218–19, 230, Zapotec civilization 140, 159, 171
Tell el-Amarna 196, 264, 265 trackways 57–59, 78, 90 263, 266–67 Zaraisk 219, 259
Tell Halula 84–85, 85 trade and exchange: of artifacts Varna 267, 267 Zimbabwe 299
Tello, Julio 24, 24 217–30; direct access 223; down- varves 120, 126 zooarchaeology see archaeozoology
tells 42 the-line exchange 223, 225; vases 171, 219, 240
352 Index

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First published in 2007 in paperback in the United States of America by

Fourth edition 2018

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Paperback: ISBN 978-0-500-84138-9

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1 Searching for the Past 10 7 How Were Artifacts Made, 208

4 When? 107 10 Why Did Things Change? 276

5 How Were Societies Organized? 142 11 Whose Past? 297

Archaeology Essentials is designed for college students taking an introductory

How to Use This Book

New to This Edition

• In Chapter 1, the history of archaeology has been further opened up to new

In addition, this new edition of Archaeology Essentials includes a range of recent

Student and Instructor Resources

Resources for Students

Resources for Instructors

Archaeology as a Discipline 11 The Development of Public

(Right) Urban archaeology:

(Below left) Working in the

(Below right) In the

12 1 • Searching for the Past

(Below left) An Inca

(Near left) Piecing together

(Below right) Archaeologists

• Physical or biological anthropology: the study of human biological or

Archaeologists who are interested in the societies of ancient Greece and

14 1 • Searching for the Past

The Important Questions

Understanding the History of Archaeology

The First Searchers: The Speculative Phase

16 1 • Searching for the Past

The First Excavations

The Roman city of Pompeii lies in the

The Beginnings of Modern Archaeology

18 1 • Searching for the Past

The Beginnings of Modern Archaeology 19

The development of archaeological

Ethnography and Archaeology

20 1 • Searching for the Past

Frederick Catherwood’s accurate,

The Beginnings of Modern Archaeology 21

(Far right) Pitt-Rivers’s meticulous plan

The Development of Field Techniques

22 1 • Searching for the Past

Sir Mortimer Wheeler (below), and

The Beginnings of Modern Archaeology 23

24 1 • Searching for the Past

Classification and Consolidation

Classification and Consolidation 25

The Ecological Approach

26 1 • Searching for the Past

The Rise of Archaeological Science

A Turning Point in Archaeology

A Turning Point in Archaeology 27

The Birth of the New Archaeology

28 1 • Searching for the Past

The Nature of Archaeology: Research Focus:

of archaeology to explain what happened in the past as well as simply

A Turning Point in Archaeology 29

The Postprocessual Debate of the 1980s and 1990s

30 1 • Searching for the Past

Postprocessualism is a collective term for a number of approaches to the past,