7 posts tagged “archaeology”

The Archaic period has been a working concept within archaeology, and even other social sciences, for well over half a century. Long thought of as the stage between the initial peopling of the Americas (sometime in the late Pleistocene) and that of large-scale societies (a few hundred to a thousand years ago), the Archaic has long been a period of simplistic understanding and characterization. One of the most influential characterizations of this period was developed by archaeologists Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips in their now classic Method and Theory in American Archaeology (Classics Southeast Archaeology). Defined “as the stage of migratory hunting and gathering cultures continuing into environmental conditions approximately those of the present” (Willey and Phillips 1958:107), it is only recently that this characterization has been challenged by new archaeological evidence. In a recent issue of the SAA Archaeological Review, Kenneth E. Sassaman introduces several papers that discuss new archaeological evidence that is shifting our understanding of the period, particularly for the Southeast of North America. Key points of these papers, as articulated by Sassaman include:

1) Although the concept of a pan-continental Archaic period in North America has fallen into disfavor, there still exists a tendancy among American archaeologists to gloss the enormous diversity of things Archaic within the broader tropes of “hunter-gatherer” and “primitive” that have shaped anthropological inquiry since the late nineteenth century.

Read the other Archaic Period archaeological southeastern key points here.

Debates and ideas about when, from where, and by what route Native American Indians peopled the Americas are often “resolved” within generalized models based on an assumption of north to south expansion processes. Likewise, these generalized models of the peopling of the Americas assume either single or multi-wave pulses of Native American Indians entering North America and migrating internally down through North America or along the Pacific Coast. Recently, however, models focused on Iberian chipped stone similarities and African or Austronesian skeletal similarities have introduced additional, “extra-Beringial,” migration scenarios to the peopling of the Americas debate. As a result, one way to address these competing models is to reconstruct the pattern and progression of population growth of the earliest viable and archaeologically visible populations in the Americas to see which models are supported.

Reconstructing the pattern and progression of the earliest viable Native American Indian populations into the Americas can be accomplished, or at least begun, by comparing the geographical distributions and progressions of archaeological sites with the earliest known accurate and precise radiometric dates. By comparing the geographical and chronological distributions of the earliest known archaeological sites, the directions from which the earliest viable Native American Indian populations came into the continents and how they expanded can begin to be understood. In Archaeological Roots of Human Diversity in the New World: A Compilation of Accurate and Precise Radiocarbon Ages from Earliest Sites, researcher Michael K. Faught has published the results of such a study.

Read more on the First Peopling of the Americas: New Archaeological Evidence Sheds Light here.

The social sciences have experienced a number of rapid and expansive theoretical developments over the course of the last hundred years. From fighting for their existence as an intellectual endeavor within academia and the university during the 19th century, to experiencing a series of popular and wide scale adoptions with such theoretical epistemologies as positivism and behaviorism, the social sciences are currently at an epistemological crossroads. In the aftermath of such powerful critiques as deconstructionism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, and the Frankfurt School’s singular attack on positivism and the Vienna School, the social sciences are struggling to find their epistemological footing. This is particularly true within the field of anthropology, including its daughter discipline of archaeology, for not only has the theoretical foundations of the discipline been called into question, but the field’s subject matter – its source of data and existence – has also been brought to bear. In an effort to reestablish some form of theoretical footing, the social sciences have begun to open their epistemological doors to cultures and ways of knowing historically allowed to only represent data. In this process, indigenous peoples and their epistemology have played a key role.

Over the past two decades a significant amount of academic energy has been invested in professing the urgent need and essentialness for developing what some have called an indigenous archaeology. Books, essays, and academic conferences have discussed, defined, and designed a multiplicity of paths towards this goal. Very little effort has been expanded, however, in seriously examining the intellectual viability or the social and cultural desirability of this project. In a recent paper entitled Aboriginalism and the Problems of Indigenous Archaeology Robert McGhee attempts to examine this theoretical endeavor within the field of archaeology.

Read more about indigenous peoples, archaeology, and the development of social science theory here.

There are two contradicting, but broadly held, views and understandings when it comes to the deep history of indigenous Native American Indian peoples in the Great Basin culture region of North America. The predominate one found in archaeology and across much of the social sciences is that today’s indigenous Native American Indians of the Great Basin (the Paiute, Shoshone, Washoe, Ute, Bannock, Kawaiisu, and Chemehuevi) have only resided in the area for a relatively short time; on the order of perhaps 1000 years. The other understanding of Great Basin human history held by the Native Americans and those scientists who look at a slightly different dataset, includes indigenous Native Americans as deeptime participants of the region.

Often argued under the rubric of Lamb’s 1958 Numic hypothesis, these two conflicting views on history have slowly been coming together. As initially argued by Dr. Jones in Respect for the Ancestors: American Indian Cultural Affiliation in the American West, and then Lithic Projectile Points and the Great Basin Region of North America, new archaeological analyses is lending continued support to an emerging understanding. This emerging understanding centers around the idea of cultural transmission: the mechanism by which technological skills, knowledge, and practices are passed from individual to individual and from group to group.

In an attempt to explain the spatial and temporal patterns observed in the archaeological record, such as why a particular artifact is found in one region but not in another region, or why an artifact type differs in shape or size between two sites, the idea of cultural transmission has slowly gained ground. As cultural transmission has been embraced in the Great Basin, the Numic hypothesis has lost what shaky evidence it had to start. In a recent paper entitled The Cultural Transmission of Great Basin Projectile-Point Technology II: An Agent-Based Computer Simulation authors Alex Mesoudi and Michael J. O’Brien lend support to the emerging understanding of Native American deeptime history in the region.

Read more about Native American Indian archaeological history in the Great Basin here.

North American archaeology has been going through major revisions and paradigm changes over the last two decades. No place has this been more evidence then in theories and long held beliefs concerning the peopling of the Americas: genetic evidence has pushed back the hypothetical initial peopling date; new archaeological sites such as the Gault Site in Texas have questioned the Clovis model; and ideas surrounding culture groups and technological affiliation have been revisited. New evidence from across the Plains and Rocky Mountain region has contributed to this overhauling of North American archaeological theories and our understanding of the peopling of the Americas. Work by Brian N. Andrews, Jason M. Labelle, and John D. Srebach (2008) has shed new light on the Folsom lithic technology and prehistoric Native American subsistence and migration patterns during the late Pleistocene/early Holocene transition.

Folsom is an archaeological complex of sites and isolated finds associated with prehistoric Native American hunter-gatherer groups inhabiting the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, and Southwest regions of North America. First defined at the Folsom type site in New Mexico and further refined at the Lindenmeier site, the complex contains a number of temporally diagnostic lithic artifacts (projectile points, channel flakes, ultrathin bifaces). Spanning 800 radiocarbon years, from approximately 10,900 to 10,100 radiocarbon years before present, documenting the longevity and regional success of the Folsom technological complex is clearly documented.

It is generally well accepted that Folsom adaptation was characterized by small groups of cyclically mobile, specialized bison hunters moving from kill to kill, often covering large areas of land in relatively short periods, with the efficiently designed Folsom toolkit seen as a key technological adaptation of this cyclical lifestyle.

Read more about prehistoric Native Americans and Folsom Technology: New Evidence from the Plains here.

I’ve always been fascinated by the past. Ancient civilizations, mysterious ruins, grand temples, and archaeological sites – they all provide a window into helping us understand the past. But how much do we really know? When did Native Americans really arrive in the New World and how? Did the Egyptians sail to other parts of the world and teach other civilizations how to build giant pyramids? Were the Portuguese the first to sail around the world and map it? These intriguing questions have always intrigued me, and the question of just how much we know about each one is still debated. The last question has been accepted as fact for quite some time. Or has it?

The new book by author Heather Terrell questions this commonly accepted fact with mystery, intrigue, and adventure. The Map Thiefis a thriller of a book – involving archaeological finds, mysterious maps from ancient voyages, and secret Portuguese societies, and more.

During the Ming dynasty’s reign in China, a vast naval fleet was assembled and commanded by Zheng He. His mission was to sail around the world and map it. According to legend he was successful, but upon returning to China the map was destroyed and Zheng He disappeared. Now, 400 years later an archaeologist has unearthed a mummy clutching onto a mysterious map. Word gets out and suddenly the map disappears. Who is this map thief?

Read more about The Map Thief: A Must Read Historical Fiction here.

One of the most important trends to develop in both anthropology and archaeology during the latter half of the 20th century was the inclusion of indigenous peoples into the larger social science discourse (beyond simply being “subjects” or “objects”). In some countries and in some areas of investigation this inclusive process began at an earlier time then in others. For example, in North America the collaborative process between anthropologists and Native Americans began as early as 1941 (Jones and Stapp, 2008). In other places, such as in South America, the process of including indigenous voices and knowledge in social science research and theoretical discussion did not begin until much later. Despite these differences in time, it has generally been acknowledged that including indigenous peoples in the anthropological and archaeological research process has greatly expanded our knowledge base, data sets, and overall understanding of the human condition. A contemporary example of this is the current collaborative process taking place in the Central Andean region of South America between archaeologists and local indigenous people.

In the yungas (hot valleys in Quechuan) of the eastern cordillera Montana along the eastern face of the Central Andes archaeologists are working with indigenous peoples in several endeavors (see the work of Christian Isendahl and Daryl Stump for example). The Montana plays a decisive ecological role at both the continental and global scales – forcing the moist easterly air masses of the South Atlantic anticyclone to ascend and release precipitation that feeds the Amazonian drainage with nutrient-rich, sediment-laden water. The Montana provides an important variable for Amazonian rain forest ecology, structure, and distribution and played an important role in the growth of indigenous peoples’ prehistoric complex societies in the lowland Neotropics, as well as contemporary indigenous groups and cultures. But the Montana physiography is not a homogenous slope landscape; it forms a complex mosaic of landforms that house considerable ecological variation principally based on differences in altitude, precipitation level, and slope gradient.

Read more about indigenous peoples and archaeologists collaborating in the Peruvian Amazon here.