The archaeological record includes the traces of the past surviving to the present.
This record is composed of many different kinds of material and information, including the artifacts, the sediments, and the structures left behind.
Archaeologists investigate this record to learn about human activity and behavior in the past.
The objects that survive from the past are sometimes referred to as material culture.
The body of evidence that archaeologists work with is part of the archaeological record.
The record includes both past materials and the context in which they are found.
Context is the association and relationships between objects that are together in the same place.
Most of the information that archaeologists use to learn about the past comes from artifacts, sites, and regions.
Artifacts are the objects and materials that people have made and used.
Sites are accumulations of such artifacts and features, representing the places where people lived or carried out certain activities.
Regions are large areas, often containing a number of sites that have been physically or conceptually modified.
Archaeologists also study attributes, features, ecofacts, and assemblages, among other things.
Scale
Two keys for archaeological studies are scale and context.
Scale has to do with size.
Scale in archaeology involves different levels of discovery, analysis, and interpretation.
There are several important levels of archaeological scale
This concept of scale also applies to time.
The resolution of most of archaeology is in tens to hundreds of years at best.
Context
Context has to do with place and association among archaeological items and the situation in which they occur.
At a basic level, context concerns relationships among artifacts.
In a broader sense, context is the physical setting, location, and association of artifacts and features.
Context is essential for learning about age, use, and meaning.
A distinction is made between primary and secondary context.
An object in its original position of discard or deposition, in the place where it was left, it said to be in primary context.
Objects that have been moved from their original place of deposition are in secondary context and less useful for learning about the past.
The provenience of an artifact is the place it was found.
Archaeological Thinking: The First Americans
A classic example of context comes from the discovery of early humans in North America.
In 1927, stone spear points were discovered among the bones of extinct bison at a place near Folsom, New Mexico.
This find convinced archaeologists that humans had been present for thousands of years.
Since the original discovery, radiocarbon dates from this site have established the age at 8500 B.C.
The Nature of the Evidence
Attributes
Attributes are the characteristics of
Attributes are the traits, measurements, and properties of archaeological materials.
Most of this information is recorded in the laboratory after artifacts have been cleaned and cataloged.
Archaeologists must select the attributes that contain information of interest for the questions they seek to answer.
Four primary attributes are used to classify archaeological artifacts: age, form, technology, and style.
Attributes can be visible or invisible.
Attributes are variable from one object to the next.
Attributes can be metric or non-metric.
Artifacts
Artifacts are portable objects shaped, modified, or created by people.
Artifacts made of stone, pottery, and plant and animal remains are some of the more common categories of archaeological materials.
Ecofacts
Ecofacts are unmodified, natural items found in archaeological contexts.
They are usually brought to a site by its occupants and useful for the study of past human activity.
Ecofacts are used to reconstruct the environment of a site and the range of resources that people used.
Ecofacts can be classified as organic or inorganic.
The most important inorganic ecofacts are the various sediments uncovered by excavation.
Features and Activity Areas
Feature is the term for the non-portable facilities and structures that humans dig or build.
Features are modifications of the earth.
Features are important for understanding the distribution and organization of human activities at a site.
Features are usually studied in the field since they are fixed in place.
Some features result from the accumulation of garbage and debris, rather than intentional construction.
A midden is any substantial accumulation of garbage or waste at a place of human activity.
Burials are a specific kind of feature.
They are usually in the form of graves or tombs.
Burials can be either inhumations or cremations.
They can be single or multiple.
Activity areas are locations of specific tasks or behaviors focused on a single or limited goal within a site.
Activity areas may be a combination of artifacts and features utilized in the performance of a specialized task.
Activity areas are present at most kinds of archaeological sites where humans performed tasks, ate food, or did other things.
Example: The Tomb of Qin Shihuang
Graves and tombs are a special part of the archaeological record for a number of reasons.
They are often considered sacred ground.
Graves contain largely complete objects.
They are usually the product of a process of ritual.
By the time of Rome, China had been unified into an enormous empire.
The man responsible for this wasQin Shihuang, also known as Shih Huang Ti.
He inherited the throne of the Qin kingdom at the age of 13 in 246 B.C.
During the first 25 years of his reign, he frequently engaged in battle, eventually conquering six other major kingdoms and creating the empire.
As soon as Shih Huang Ti became king, he began building his tomb.
Written documents from the time suggest that 700,000 laborers worked for 36 years on the project.
The tomb consisted of a subterranean palace for the emperor to inhabit for eternity.
The palace was built at the bottom of a 100-foot pit.
The size of the palace was the equivalent of three large soccer fields.
The architects of the tomb conceived of it as a universe in miniature.
The palace tomb was buried under an enormous mound of earth.
The total area of the tomb, buried offerings, and grounds covers more than 20 square miles.
Guarding the east gate to the emperor's tomb is a chamber filled terracotta soldiers and horses.
Some 8000 terracotta figures have been exposed, along with wooden chariots.
Since the original discovery of the terracotta warriors, many more buried chambers have been found.
There are almost 100 pits with warriors, archers, chariots, and horses in a large zone surrounding the tomb.
Assemblages and Components
Assemblage is a generic term that can be used at the level of a region, a site, a structure, or an activity.
An assemblage is a related set of different things.
Assemblages contain a substantial amount of information because they are combinations of artifacts in context.
On a larger scale, the term assemblage is sometimes used to describe all the artifacts and features that define an archaeological culture.
The term component is often applied to an assemblage from a single layer, living floor, or occupation horizon.
Component implies a set of materials in contemporary use by the same group of people.
A multi-component site contains different episodes or time periods of activity.
Related terms include occupation, living floor, tradition, horizon, and phase.
Sites
Archaeological sites are places of human behavior, concentrations of the material remains of past activities.
Sites are accumulations of artifacts and features.
Sites take many different forms and are found in a variety of places on the landscape.
Sites are distinguished as surface or buried.
A distinction can be made between residential and non-residential sites.
Camps, hamlets, villages, towns and cities provide a useful five-fold division of residential sites.
Camps are short-term, temporary settlements usually associated with hunter-gatherers or nomads.
Villages are small residential units of permanent houses with populations numbering a hundred or so.
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Towns are larger than villages and exhibit some internal differentiation in the size and location of structures.
Cities are very large with populations of 10,000 or more inhabitants.
Extractive sites are non-residential localities where some members of society obtain food or other resources.
Activity is limited and specialized.
A shell midden is a specialized kind of extractive site.
Example: South African Rock Art
Rock art is found on all the inhabited continents.
Rock art is known from virtually all the states in the U.S.
The first rock art appeared after 30,000 years ago in Europe, Africa, and Australia.
Rock art sites are scattered across the landscape of southern Africa.
Rock painting in this region is thought to be at least 25,000 years old.
These rock paintings are normally found near shelters or overhangs.
Ancient art is studied by a variety of scholars.
Science in Archaeology: Dating the Paintings
Until recently the antiquity of rock art was a contentious issue.
The methods and techniques for dating rock are very limited because of the nature of the medium.
Only a few absolute dates have been available from rock art sites.
Now, archaeological scientists using new techniques are dating the rock surface just beneath the painting, rather than the actual pigments.
Mineral salts, known as oxalates, just behind missing flakes of pigment in the rock art can be dated.
This new dating technique revealed the rock art to be thousands of years older than previously thought.
Painted stones in a cave deposit in Namibia shows that an artistic tradition extends back at least 25,000 years.
Just recently the age of art and decoration in South Africa has been pushed back much deeper into the past.
Excavations at Blombos Cave, have recovered evidence of rock engraving approximately 77,000 B.P.
Regions and Landscapes
Two different terms are often used to describe larger geographic areas.
A region is a physical or geographic entity.
A landscape is a humanly modified or perceived area.
These terms are often used interchangeably in archaeology.
Questions about regions and landscapes focus on how material culture is distributed in space.
Studies involve large areas ranging in size from a few acres to a county or state or even larger area.
Regional archaeology tends to focus on the distribution of artifacts or sites across an area.
Emphasis is on large-scale patterns in human behavior and the use of the environment.
Regional studies often involve settlement pattern analysis or the study of specific features of the environment.
Landscape archaeology tends to emphasize the space between the sites or artifacts.
Monuments are an important category of archaeological remains, found either within sites or across the landscape.
Various kinds of monuments are found in most parts of the world.
Monuments take a variety of forms.
Example: A Landscape of Mounds
Native American groups built earthen mounds and structures across much of North America in the past.
Thousands of distinctively shaped earthen mounds are found in southern Wisconsin and bordering regions.
They were built between AD 700 and 1200 and vary in size.
These mounds are effigies.
Some of the animals are found throughout the entire area of the Effigy Mound Culture, but others have a more limited distribution.
Specific animals represent ideological symbols of different parts of the perceived environment.
Spatial Archaeology
Spatial archaeology is the study of how and why prehistoric remains are distributed across geographic space.
Investigations range from the analysis of the location of individual activities within a site to the distribution of sites in a region.
Different levels of spatial information are of interest ranging from a small activity area or feature within a site to a series of sites within a larger region.
Within Site Spatial Analysis: Activity Areas and Features
Within-site spatial patterning in archaeology is usually found in the form of activity areas, individual features, architectural units, or houses.
A small area of artifacts and/or features within a site contains important information in its spatial pattern and relationships.
There are major differences in the archaeological evidence from the camps of hunter-gatherers and the villages, towns, and cities of farming populations.
The reconstruction of activity areas is often difficult for a variety of reasons.
The discovery of activity areas within sedentary settlements is also difficult.
Example: Activity Areas at Teotihuacán, Mexico
The site of Teotihuacán was one of the largest cities in the ancient world around A.D. 100.
The site is located outside modern Mexico City in the highlands of Mexico.
The city housed 150,000 people in a series of large apartment compounds.
More than 5000 compounds, structures, and activity areas were recorded in the survey.
The compound of Oztoyahualco has been the focus of detailed study of internal activity areas.
One aspect of the study involved the identification of areas for ritual and ceremonial activities.
The compound itself likely housed three extended families in a series of rooms.
Each unit had specific areas for food preparation and consumption, animal butchering, refuse deposition, sleeping, and other activities.
Courtyards were a focus of many activities, including various ceremonies and rituals.
Small altars dedicated to household deities were built in these open spaces.
Eighteen graves were unearthed within the compound.
A number of artifacts document the importance of the courtyards as ritual activity centers.
Protecting the Past: The City of the Gods
Teotihuacán is protected in Mexico by presidential decree.
The center of the protected archaeological zone today covers about 1 square mile.
The protected area includes more than 5000 structures.
The site has been threatened several times over the course of the last century.
Within Site Spatial Analysis: Houses and Households
Houses are residential structures delimited by walls or other boundaries and enclosing artifacts and features used in domestic activities.
Houses are a locus of residential activity for an individual or group (the household) during the occupation of a site.
Households are the basic building block of societies.
A variety of information is available from the study and analysis of archaeological households.
Such studies provide insight on the organization and operation of these basic units of society.
Differences may indicate a division of male and female space and activities, how many people lived in a household, and the structure of the family.
Example: Household Archaeology at Agayadan Village, Alaska
The Aleutian Islands of Alaska are home to some of the more interesting archaeology of hunter-gatherers in North America.
In the period between A.D. 1400 and 1800 these groups were characterized by an economy based on rich maritime and riverine resources.
There were large villages organized by ranking.
Large dwellings were occupied by several nuclear families and their slaves.
A total of 20 houses were visible on the surface as large depressions in the ground at the site of Agayadan Village.
Three houses were examined in detail.
The diet was based on food from the sea and rivers.
Distinct communal and private areas were recognized in these multi-family dwellings.
Distinctions between the households were found.
The end of the village likely came with violent encounters with Russian whalers as a consequence of the Russian War in 1764.
Site Analysis
A site is often a composite of artifacts, features, activity areas, structures, and midden.
The day-to-day activities of the occupants may be reflected in the various structures and activity areas found throughout the settlement.
Spatial patterning within a site can provide information about the number of houses and people at the settlement and on their relationships with one another.
Regional Spatial Analysis
Approaches that relate variables of interaction among human groups are of growing importance.
Variables include the size and nature of groups involved, the nature of the interaction, the physical space across which interaction occurs.
The regional investigation of settlements depends on the type of sites present.
The camps of hunter-gatherers present very different patterns than others.
Lewis Binford suggested a useful distinction for the study of hunter-gatherer settlement.
He distinguished foraging and collecting patterns based on residential mobility.
Foragers move people to food while collectors bring foods back to their base.
Among village farmers, differences in the size and elaboration of houses may be evidence of status differentiation.
The arrangement of houses in a town or city also may reflect social organization in the separation of poor and wealthy households.
Concerns for privacy and protection in the form of fences, palisades, or ditches may indicate private ownership or conditions of competition or warfare.
Regional settlement patterns can provide a variety of information on the prehistoric use of the landscape.
Several different kinds of sites are often found in an area.
Residential settlements of various size and duration are typical targets for investigation.
Site Formation
In order to understand the past it is essential to find connections between human behavior in the past and the artifacts that survive in the present.
Archaeological sites are created through a process known as site formation.
Michael Schiffer distinguished between different processes for site formation.
One set of activities creates or forms the archaeological record and is referred to as formation processes.
Another set of activities and processes transforms the buried record over time and is referred to as transformation processes.
Schiffer distinguished these processes as natural or cultural transformations of the archaeological record.
Taphonomy is the study of what happens to a plant or animal between its death and the time it is found as a fossil or archaeological remain.
The study of the natural and cultural transformation of past human activity into an archaeological site is essentially the taphonomy of behavior.
Following burial, a number of disturbances can effect the location, context, and preservation of the archaeological materials in the ground.
Disturbances can be both cultural or natural.
Preservation
One of the primary processes affecting the formation of an archaeological site is preservation.
Once objects and features are present in the ground the forces of nature initiate a process of decay and decomposition.
Archaeologists normally find only a tiny proportion of the total material culture that was present in the past.
One of the most important conditions for preservation is moisture.
Inorganic materials typically survive much longer than organic material.
Example: Windover Pond, Florida
Windover Pond is located near Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The site is a pond cemetery used by the people who lived and died along Florida's Atlantic coast between 8000 and 7000 years ago.
Archaic hunter-gatherers buried their dead in a small pond.
The waterlogged conditions and unusually low acidity of the pond preserved the people and the gifts with which they were buried to a remarkable degree.
At least 168 individuals were staked down underwater on the soft mud floor of the pond.
Ancient DNA and bits of brain tissue were preserved in more than 90 of the individuals.
The large number of burials provided important information about this population of hunter-gatherers.
Large numbers of artifacts have also been preserved.
There were more than 85 examples of weaving, basketry, woodworking, and clothing.
The textiles are the oldest woven materials in North America.
Many of the artifacts were completely unknown prior to the discovery of Windover.
Example: The Iceman
One of the most extraordinary finds of the last century was the frozen mummy of a man from the Stone Age.
He was discovered in the high Alps along the border between Italy and Austria.
He was preserved for 6,000 years.
More than 150 specialists have been examining all aspects of Ötzi the Iceman.
Most of the internal organs, as well as the eyeballs, are intact.
His last meal included unleavened bread, some greens, and meat.
Analysis of pollen in the stomach contents indicates he died between March and June.
The Iceman was approximately 50 years old at the time of his death.
The Iceman was carrying a substantial amount of gear with him.
He had both weapons and clothing.
One of the more interesting finds is the copper axe which documents the widespread use of copper during the latter half of the Neolithic period.
The difficult questions about the Iceman include where he came from and how he died.
He probably came from valleys to the south in Italy, less than a day's walk away.
Deep cuts to his hand and wrist suggest he was in an armed struggle and an arrowhead lodged in his back may well have been the cause of death.
Protecting the Past: Ötzi's New Home
The Iceman's body today is displayed in an exhibit in an Italian museum.
The museum also contains the artifacts that accompanied the Iceman on his long journey through time.
